SF City Council

Haven’t We Learned Yet? (Construction Manager at Risk is a secretive process)

l3wis January 9, 2019 2Comments

Construction Manager at Risk as practiced in Sioux Falls SD is a failure and no one in city government is willing to admit it. This video has Cameraman Bruce speaking during the Public Input portion of the Sioux Falls City Council Informational meeting on January 8, 2018. He followed presentations by city administrators extolling their versions of why it makes their jobs easier.  Nowhere in their presentations was proof offered we get a better building, other than a few “amenities”. But at what cost, what did we lose?

In 2016, a group of 6400 Sioux Falls citizens were part of the Stop the Funding effort to slow down the process of building the Romantix Annex City Center Administration building. It was an ill-conceived and poorly planned building designed to use up a portion of the city’s bonding authority before the last mayor left office. His rush was to have a borrow big money and then have a big going away party, not good government.

Now we are left with a building with many design flaws few want to admit. Why else would the original supporters of this building try to quietly spend over $400,000 to “fix” some of the flaws?

This is not a gotcha moment. The current administration did the right thing to not hide these problems. They did not create them. The other guy did it and he should always be the blame for his mistakes. His mistakes ended in May 2018.

We ask, why can’t these change orders, fixing mistakes be put in the public arena so we can be part of the solution and not always have to think the worst?

Tuesday’s Sioux Falls City Council Tidbits

l3wis January 8, 2019 8Comments

It’s already been a busy day.

THRIVE STUDY SHOWS DECLINE OF MIDDLE CLASS OVER THE PAST DECADE

This just isn’t a Sioux Falls issue, it is happening across the nation. But as Councilor Starr pointed out during the informational meeting, instead of subsidizing food and housing for people, maybe we should start paying living wages in this town. Gee, what a concept. Employers would prefer to wage collude and pay low wages and have non-profits, the government, churches and school district bail these people out. It’s total BULLSH*T and it’s time our local government pulls their heads from their asses and realize that we need to attract businesses with integrity that want to build the middle class again in Sioux Falls.

PROPERTY TAX REDUCTIONS

I’m not going to rail on the city, because I know they are considering expanding this program to individual homeowners and smaller apartment property owners. Great idea! The council is going to have conversations about this, and I know it was one of the tenants that Brekke ran on. I have been saying for years that property tax reductions for individuals who live in lower middle class neighborhoods to do essential renovations to their homes (windows, siding, roofing, etc.) would go a lot farther than giving tax breaks to people who build glass and concrete million dollar condos downtown. But what do I know? I’m just a middle-class Marxist.

ADMINISTRATION BUILDING COOLING SYSTEM WILL END UP IN COURT, MAYBE

Tonight at the regular city council meeting, Public Works Director, Cotter was upfront about what happened. As I heard the other day, the thermal cooling system did not work. Pretty much bad engineering. And because it needs to be fixed NOW, the city has to pay for it, but there is legal discussion about who will ultimately pay for it. It is further proof that Construction Manager at Risk does not work. Basically because the public, and really the council, is left in the dark about problems. Tonight was the first time anybody heard there was a problem. Why? Because the CMAR is supposed to handle these things (behind closed doors). It looks like if we are not successful in the legal process we will be holding the bag. Not acceptable.

As many people brought up tonight, we should have never built the building. We did not need it. Thanks Bowlcut.

5G GOT APPROVED, because we had no choice

It was amazing and disgusting to watch. The city council pretty much had to allow the contract ($175 a year, per pole, per year) because the Feds said so, or they will sue. Imagine that, DC represents big business and special interests. Who knew?

EVENTS CENTER CAMPUS STUDY GROUP

The mayor announced a study group today to figure out what to do with the EC campus. Great idea. As I said yesterday, this should have been done before we built the Denty out there. Either way, I will probably NOT be asked to be on the group, so here is my two cents. Fix up the Arena, DO NOT TEAR IT DOWN. It is a fortress. Bulldoze the Canaries Stadium. If they want to continue playing in SF we have spent millions on Harmadon Park. Great place to watch a game. The taxpayers of SF don’t need to continue to subsidize Pro-Am teams in this town.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfq2VSyZJ4w

HUEY BUILDING PROJECT PULLED

In some ways, this turned out to be a good thing, since it will still be a place where ADA individuals can live. It’s just too bad these people had to go thru this. That being said, I think the City Council should have approved the re-zone of surplus property. I don’t think that alley is that valuable, it’s just a bunch of developers snipping at each other, so now we are back to the beginning.

LEVITT WILL PUT ON 50 CONCERTS A YEAR . . .

Even if it rains.

Well, kind of.

I guess the Levitt will ‘Plan’ on having 50 concerts a year, but how it works, as I understand it, if there is a rain out and the concert cannot be held due to weather, it still ‘counts’. Interesting, if it is true.

There still has been little conversation about allowing bringing your own beer to events. The argument to selling only on site is a security issue. I get it. So why not have a secure area for people who bring their own beverages? This isn’t rocket science folks. Provide a secure area so people can bring their own.

Sioux Falls City Council Agenda • Jan 8, 2019 • Massive Change Orders

l3wis January 5, 2019 6Comments

Informational Meeting, 4 PM

There will be 4 presentations/reports during the informational, that look very intriguing, unfortunately I have no supporting documents yet, so I have no idea what they will be about;

• Siouxland Heritage Museum board

• Property tax reduction programs

• Construction manager at risk (the timing of this is interesting considering the change orders in the consent agenda during the regular meeting that are very mysterious)

• Sioux Falls Thrive Update

City Council Regular Meeting, 7 PM

Item #6, Approval of Contracts/Agreements

The city is subsidizing transportation for a private Non-Profit and the School District at the tune of $226K;

Once again the city coffers are footing the bill for entities that should be able to pay for these on their own. Isn’t if funny how the SFSD has oodles of money for admin pay and brick and mortar buy can’t scrape money together for actual EDUCATION.

The Arts Council comes for it’s annual subsidy;

While most of the time I wouldn’t think nothing of this, usually in the past an Arts Council representative would do a presentation about what their programming is. To tell you the truth, ever since the last director left, several months ago, I have NO IDEA what they have been doing. Maybe it would be a good time for an update at the meeting. A city councilor needs to pull this agenda item and get some man splain’in.

MYSTERIOUS $468K CHANGE ORDER ON ADMIN BUILDING

Item #7, Change Orders

While change orders are not uncommon with multi-million dollar city buildings, almost a half a million on a $25 million dollar building is mysterious;

After I saw this on Friday, I started asking contractor friends if they knew anything. The ‘rumor’ going around is that the thermal system they were going to use for HVAC (which requires drilling into the ground) didn’t work because of water and quartzite issues.

This of course would be an engineering mistake, so why wouldn’t the construction manager at risk (CMAR) catch this? And if they did, why are the taxpayers on the hook for fixing it? If a contractor miscalculates or makes a mistake in engineering, isn’t that their fault?

If all of this is ‘true’, the city needs to put on their big boy pants and tell the CMAR to ‘EAT IT’ or at least get a judge to tell them to.

Hopefully the council will pull this item so we can get some more man splain’in.

Item #10, 2nd Reading, Ordinance to give a Heckuva Deal on a lease agreement to a major Communications company. Oh, and we don’t have a choice in the matter, because it’s the ‘FEDS’. Another contract the ‘powerless’ city council is voting on that they have NO input or control of. Silly.

Item #12, 1st Reading, Ordinance to repeal drone regulations in our city parks. While this makes sense, since the FAA regulates our air space, just another example of the FEDS telling us what to do. Thanks John Thune.

Sioux Falls City Council’s NEW SIRE numbering system a mess

l3wis January 5, 2019 0Comments

Cameraman Bruce has noticed some issues with the new SIRE numbering system, mostly that they are re-using older meeting numbers, which can cause major DATA issues. He has brought this up with the city clerk and several city councilors;

Sioux Falls is once again setting up to repeat the past by recycling SIRE meeting numbers. Why is it happening?

Since the December 2018 SIRE meeting system conversion, the meeting numbers have been recycled from the past. To the average user, this does not seem to be a problem, but for a historian or data manager, it is a disaster ready to happen.

All meetings should be set to unique identity numbers built on the key numbering field used in the past.

The recently recorded and posted meetings should be renumbered starting with at least #2797 to prevent future issues.

I’ve spent 40 years cleaning up the disasters caused by this kind of sloppiness. Is this the kind of disaster preparedness we can continue to expect from our city government?

It is hard to imagine a good data manager not raising a red flag to this disaster in the making. Is there a logical reason for recycling a unique key identifier field or just sloppiness? Is the plan to recycle all the previous numbers used? Is there any plan?

As with so many things done in Sioux Falls city government, there is no planning until there is a disaster. When we have the disaster, its always an act of the almighty causing it, not the lack of planning for contingencies. It’s as if we see our government setting up for the next disasters by the lack of planning. Why waste future money and time by letting this lack of planning carry on any longer? Fix the numbering system now while it can be.

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