Apparently we are all out of extra money, go figure. The money is needed to fill all the ‘holes’ in the building. It’s too late, the money has already gone down the tubes 🙂
The administration waited until tonight at 10:40 PM to give the information. Erickson suggested they defer it to digest it more and she said it was unacceptable to not get the information last week, saying they knew the numbers then.
Councilor Stehly railed on them about ramrodding this project and asked for an audit of the parking department. She also asked for a deferral.
Councilor Brekke also raised concerns about last minute information and is concerned about the continuing trend of inadequate information given to the city council. She also wanted a deferral.
Councilor Soehl suggests they just approve it and it doesn’t matter if they are ‘pissed’ at the administration about the information. (yes it does).
Neitzert agrees with him, and admits he got information in advance this afternoon. He also says the councilors are being ridiculous by acting like engineers. He is right, they are not engineers, but they are in charge of the purse, and should be watching how money is being spent.
The deferral passes 5-3 (Neitzert, Selberg and Soehl voted against it).
Brekke said it best, “We have this false sense of urgency all the time, and it needs to end.”
First they wanted to have inspections every three years. That failed and was changed to the hives being inspected whenever animal control gets a concern or complaint.
They wanted signs posted in the yards of people who have hives to warn people. This amendment passed, and is completely ridiculous. If I had to put one of these signs in my yard, I would put another sign next to it that says, “Councilors Erickson and Kiley made me put this sign up because they are paranoid nanny-staters.” I would go even farther to offer my design skills to design the signs and send you to a printer that can provide it.
The last amendment was to have physical barriers of the hives on the property (like walls or solid fences) instead of just forage. This also failed.
The whole ordinance passed (amended for signage), but Erickson and Kiley voted against it. They were concerned about bee allergies.
As I have stated before, bees are already here, and they can sting people whenever they want to, adding hives won’t increase or reduce this risk.
It amazes me that the people who proposed these ludicrous amendments are the same people who voted for the fraudulent bunker ramp downtown. Maybe we should put a sign in the yard of every city councilor, mayor and city employee that supported the bunker ramp that says, “I voted for the bunker ramp, even though I had mountains of evidence it was a bad idea and I have yet to apologize for my monumental mistake.”
Wow! This is a crazy first. The city of Sioux Falls wants to spend up to $10 million dollars of public money on the River Greenway expansion to make a development more attractive that hasn’t even been built yet;
Phase three would see the trail system extended between the upper falls at Falls Park to Kiwanis Park, which sits between Sioux Steel and the river.
Shouldn’t we wait to see the final plans of the Sioux Steel Development before we start building this? And if the city has already seen these plans, why are they NOT being shared with the public before we are asked to borrow the money? I may not be opposed if I could see the plans.
We have presentations on Microblading & The 3rd Phase of the River Greenway Project. This should be interesting to see how they will spend around $10 million on this project.
Item #7, Approval of Contracts, apparently it costs $79K to design and manage the construction of a very small Dog Park Downtown. I think I need to get into the dog park design business.
Fire Chief Goodroad also provides some information on what the design process will include for the public safety training center;
The Architectural Services will provide programming services and final space requirements for the following: • Main Classroom/Office Building • High Rise Training (Burn Tower) • 2-Story Training Building • 2-Story Mixed Use Training Building • Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) • Hazmat/Rail • Outdoor Live Fire Props • Propane Fuel Farm • Police/Fire Emergency Vehicle Operations Course (EVOC) (high and low speed) • Outdoor Classroom • Tactical Gun Range • Site Development and Landscape
Item #69, 2nd Reading, Bee Keeping ordinance. I think will have the support of at least 5 councilors. But it will be interesting to see what amendments get tacked on.
Item #74, 1st Reading, Clarifying the duties of the City Attorney as advisor to certain citizen boards. While I support the change, it should have been put on the ballot in the Spring for citizens to vote on it.
Item #79, Resolution to increase the funding for the Bunker Ramp by $1.5 million. It’s too bad this is all the way at the end of the meeting. I suspect the discussion about this should be HOT. I think they have at least 5 votes to pass this, in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if this actually gets 7 votes. Hopefully though we will get some answers as to what this is for, but I’m guessing we will just get a lot of runaround with directors telling councilors during questioning, “I’ll get that info for you tomorrow and email it.” (so the public can’t see it tonight before it passes). I have often thought that a vote should be automatically deferred one week if city staff can’t provide an answer in the public meeting, or at least try to find it before the vote takes place. What’s the point in answering a question after the passage of legislation?
Item #80, Resolution to appoint citizen board members. The mayor gets to appoint two members to the State Theatre Board (since we THE TAXPAYERS gave them money). I can feel the warmth of the popcorn already.
The killing floor continues at the CRC meetings. They will take up several items including;
• Removing Mayor from Council, Super Majority to approve bonds & plurality or ranked choice voting. I suspect they will all be killed by the CRC. In the graphic below you will see the timeline they are working with in this slaughter of good legislation and changes to the Charter.
Theresa was the guest this past Friday (the video isn’t up yet – my assumption is they didn’t want the 5G presser to get overshadowed). The Director of the Dudley house, Madeline Shields is also still hosting the show. Apparently running a homeless shelter isn’t that hard, so she has time to play TV anchor.
I asked Stehly what was discussed;
• Parking ramp
• Communication challenges within the mayor’s office (I have a feeling this is referring to Mutt & Jeff, his two COS employees)
• Fixing project trim
• Upcoming city election in 2020
• How to get citizens more involved and informed
• Adding more municipal government education into our public schools*
• How the mayor has utilized Stehly’s inmate initiative ideas but needs to go a step further and reinstate the scoop it program and eliminate project trim (use inmate labor instead)
• Bee ordinance
• Concerns with changing the meeting times
*I found that topic pretty humorous, considering the SFSD and School Board are extremely secretive and make most decisions behind closed doors.
l3wis 
