Is the City of Sioux Falls violating ordinance when plowing streets?

by

It doesn’t fail, when you run a city blog as long as I have, whenever it snows I hear about the removal. I have come to the realization that most people are being nit-picky, but the latest blowback is concerning.

SNOWGATES. By ordinance the city has to use them, unless they decide not to. I know, seems like a pretty big out. During and before the petition drive, Staggers and especially Stehly did extensive research on them, and unless the snow is super wet they work well up to almost 20 inches. The city continues to use a mulligan on them, but they could have been easily used the last two times, which brings us to another problem;

CLEARING INTERSECTIONS. One of the benefits of having snowgates is clearing intersections when the north/south and east/west streets are cleared, instead of creating a massive windrow they can be alleviated immediately.

But one of the glaring problems is this;

Looks like the city is supposed to be clearing snow curb to curb.

I have also heard the city has scaled back on private contractor use. I am not opposed to that, and would rather see city union employees getting the OT instead of a private contractor, but you wonder why this relationship has changed?

Isn’t life so wonderful that the only thing we have to bitch about with local government is how they take the white crap away?

I have often looked at things like public transit and snow removal as basic economic development. When people can safely get to work and make wages that’s a good thing. You kind of wonder how many folks were either terminated or reprimanded during this past storm because they couldn’t make it to work?

Local government is easy. Collect taxes, provide essential services.

Denver voters to decide if city pays for sidewalk maintenance

by

This isn’t something new. When councilor Staggers was still alive we had many discussions about doing a local ballot initiative to force the city to trim the trees in the parking strip and maintain city owned sidewalks abutting private property;

They will get to decide whether to shift the responsibility of maintaining sidewalks from individual property owners to the city. The proposal on next week’s ballot would also impose a tax on property owners, to help maintain the city’s current sidewalks and add them in the many parts of town where they’re missing.

The initiative we discussed was similar. If passed, it would be up to the city council and public works to decide on an additional front assessment fee based on the square footage of your sidewalk and boulevard.

The ballot measure would charge property owners based on how much of their land runs along a street, and what type of street it faces. The measure would include discounts for owners in poorer neighborhoods. Proponents say that a typical family living in a single-family house would pay about $9 a month for the improvements. Of course, people with corner lots, or businesses located downtown, could pay more.

Sioux Falls is littered with bad public sidewalks. I think a better approach is to just have the city fix it and we reimburse the costs through our front assessment.

Marshall surveyed 16 cities last year to see how much information they had about their streets and sidewalks. All of the cities kept meticulous records on where potholes appeared, and they reported being able to fill those within days. But most had no comprehensive information about the conditions of their sidewalks. Washington was the only city that provided an average response time for fixing sidewalks, and it was 270 days, Marshall said.

Kind of sounds familiar. While our pedestrian and biking infrastructure crumbles the city is busy filling potholes that have to be refilled multiple times (instead of just building better roads).

“It’s not sidewalks as the target. It’s improving walkability,” Kraft said. “It’s increasing active transportation. Sidewalks and connected sidewalk networks are a means for getting there.”

Exactly.

I also think new retail businesses in Sioux Falls should be required to put a small bike rack in front of their business. If businesses are required to have so many parking spaces they should also be required to provide bicycle parking.

City of Sioux Falls files Water Reclamation Lawsuit, but who knew?

by

Last night the Argus Leader put up a story about the lawsuit and how the city is suing for ‘millions of dollars’ in damages and loses. Basically the city contracted with a company to install a system that would suck nasty gas particles from reclamation to power a generator to save electrical costs at the plant.

Sounds like a great idea. But it didn’t work.

Where the story gets bizarre is the timeline.

The whole process started in 2015 and was installed by 2017. The city realized right away that it wasn’t working and since the company has not resolved the issue, they are suing.

Makes sense.

But even if you give the company a year to resolve the problems (2018) why has it taken 4 years to decide to sue? (we still don’t know the outcome of the failed geo-thermal HVAC system at the administration building – probably safe to assume the taxpayers ate that $300K F’up)

I asked a city mole why we are hearing this from the Argus and not the city? Wouldn’t the city at least want to put a press release out about the pending litigation before a surprise story appears in the paper?

This person said they were unsure if many people in leadership even knew about it.

HUH?

I’m still digging around on that statement because if it is true how does the city file a lawsuit seeking millions in damages without knowing they filed it? Did the mayor know? Did the lead city attorney know? Did the council know? Did the public works director know? Did the guy who cleans the mayor’s toilet know? Bueller? Bueller?

Maybe they did and just didn’t bother telling us. Maybe they wanted the Argus to crack this nut?

But this isn’t like Joe Sixpack getting sued over some bushes and piles of shingles in his backyard. This is a long strung out process with millions in taxpayer money wasted. Oh, that’s right, the city is good at those sort of things, at the end of the day we will probably end up paying them a settlement 🙂

But you have to wonder, did a subordinate file the suit (or hire outside counsel to do so) without anyone in leadership knowing? Well folks, that is how cruise control government works, let the minions worry about the lawsuits so it frees up more time to write children’s books.

When was Mayor TenHaken going to tell the council and public about this?

by

So I have been getting several calls today about what Poops said about the Wastewater Treatment Plant in this interview yesterday;

TenHaken says city is trying to remain cognizant of rising inflation

But as he looked toward the next year, he said the city is also trying to remain cognizant of rising inflation and that many people are dealing with “incredible monetary tension” at the moment as they consider any sort of city fees or rate increases.

It’s hitting the city, too. TenHaken said groundbreaking on the expansion of the city’s wastewater plant has been postponed as “historic price escalations” began piling up.
“We’re not ready to break ground yet,” TenHaken said, “because we still got a lot of pencil sharpening to do now based on the price escalation we’re seeing.”


To be honest with you, it surprised me also. The city has bonded $260 Million dollars for the plant, and has been working on it (not sure what the groundbreaking is about). The city has been spending the money and construction has begun. I look at this project as essential for growth, and it should have been started 10 years ago. Why didn’t that happen? Well because Huether put it off so he could bond for the Midco, City Admin, Bunker Ramp and Events Center. Ten Haken continued with the Bunker Ramp and has been handing out TIFs and other Booty Prizes like a drunken pirate, including $10 million last night to DSU.

There is absolutely no reason this project should be stalled and the contractors need to be held to their bid obligations. You also have to take into account that this department in the city is funded mostly by FEES and not taxes because it is an enterprise fund, and our fees have been drastically raised to help pay the bonds on this. If we need to take money from the 2nd penny to finish it, we have to do it, plain and simple.

Still curious why the public and council have not been alerted about a pause on a $260 million dollar essential infrastructure project? Oh, I forgot, it’s that transparency thing the administration hates so much.