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SF City Council

Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council Sioux Falls

The Sioux Falls City Council needs to look in the mirror

l3wis 2Comments

The Sioux Falls City Council wants to point out that some people from the public are disruptive, unprofessional and disrespectful at the council meetings.

Really?

While that may be true, they should take a good look in the mirror. Before TenHaken took the helm there was backroom negotiations leaving several other councilors out of the process, in the open meetings there was often public shaming of fellow councilors from both sides. The chair himself would often cut off councilors or tell them they out of order (when they were not). Than there was the threats of ethics violations, etc, etc.

Trust me, while the public watching the meetings whether in person or on TV, they see this. We hoped with the new administration that some of this would end, NO more backroom deal making, NO more fighting at the meetings. It hasn’t.

Some have suggested to me since the Tuesday meeting that maybe instead of just making rules for the public,  maybe there should be some rules on how the council treats each other at the meetings. It certainly lacks decorum. Not only is a lot of their actions uncalled for, some of it may violate open meeting laws (cutting deals via private phone conversations and emails without including ALL of the council in on the discussion).

I will say that some of the ideas about a compromise are worth taking a look at, but the process to come up with these compromises is not above board. The council really needs to either defer, or better yet, kill the current proposal and go back to the drawing board. This starts with having an open conversation in a working session hashing out the details. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to have the public be included on a discussion about public input in the open? I think so.

We have had enough of ramrod negotiations by the previous administration and his team of council rubberstampers. In fact, many times the council meetings got contentious because of this awful way of governing. Mayor TenHaken needs to demand that the council drops the current backroom conversations going on right now and move this out in the sunlight, otherwise we have accomplished nothing but maintaining the status quo.

1st Amendment Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council Sioux Falls

Stehly and Starr on Jon Michael’s Forum about Public Input

l3wis 4Comments

You can listen HERE.

As I understand it there may be some amendments to the proposal on Tuesday, ultimately leaving it at the beginning of the meeting with some other restrictions. At this moment that train is still moving, so I would prefer not to elaborate.

Gotta love Stormland-TV’s version of this topic. Thirty-Seven people talked Tuesday night about public input. Out of those people, ONLY 2 supported changing it, and both are former public/government employees. So guess who they interview? You guessed it, the TWO who wanted it moved, oh, and they threw in June Staggers to make it look fair.

Make no mistake, the Media wants this moved to the end so they can make their 10 PM news deadline.

SF City Council Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls City Council Info Meeting; borers and guns

l3wis 17Comments

The fun got started right away during open discussion when Theresa and Janet asked where the prior discussion was for the proposal to move public input. But the big news maker of the afternoon was Pat Starr’s proposal to fine gun owners who are not responsible enough to lock up their weapons than get stolen. While several news agencies and blogs have been on the ‘freak’ about this, settle down, just watch what Pat said during the meeting. He is ‘exploring’ the idea and seeing what the city ‘can’ do. He also is very clear he supports gun ownership, what he does not support is ‘irresponsible’ gun ownership. The fine essentially would be for ignoramuses who are not smart enough to lock up their weapons.

But the even bigger news to come from the informational (IMO) was that the city will take care of the ash tree removal in the boulevard (parking strip) at their expense, well really is our expense since we pay frontage taxes on that land. Either way you won’t have to directly pay a contractor to remove that tree. The city and maybe the use of private contractors will eliminate that. They did caution though you are responsible for ash trees on your property.

Councilor Stehly suggested since the city will be purchasing a half-million dollar tree truck and possibly 3 FTEs that maybe it is time to tie in Project TRIM with the ash tree removal? She basically said she wanted to start that discussion. Of course Kiley had all kinds of boloney excuses not to do it. We will see how this goes.

Mayor TenHaken religion SF City Council Sioux Falls

Should the chair of the city council meeting be doing the opening invocation?

l3wis 22Comments

I’m just asking the question. I have never seen the chair (mayor) do the opening prayer before until last night. In Paul’s defense, the pastor that was supposed to do it didn’t show or call (that was weird) and maybe Paul doesn’t know procedure, but a foot soldier said this to me in an email this morning;

I found it very insulting and crossing the line when the new young mayor crossed the secular line by giving the invocation at the meeting. The leader of the event must NEVER cause the subtle inference of mixing religion and government. It is just not done. NEVER.

Well, I wasn’t that offended, but I did think it was strange. In the past city councilors have done the invocation, but never the chair. Maybe Paul should have asked one of them to do it? Either way, I could care less if they do it or not. The deist, Ben Franklin, who created the invocation did it to calm the nerves of the lawmakers before a meeting, it had nothing to do with religion. These days, I don’t think it is working that well anyway. Maybe a 10 second time of silence and deep breaths would go further.

SF City Council Sioux Falls

After 90% of the Public said to leave public input as is, city council votes against them

l3wis 27Comments

FF 18:00 for beginning of meeting.

Councilors Kiley, Selberg, Soehl and Neitzert voted for moving it, Brekke, Starr and Stehly voted it down. Erickson was absent (she supports moving it).

There was over 35 people and two hours of testimony tonight to keep public input as is. Only TWO people spoke against it, one was a former public employee (Former School Superintendent) and a former county commissioner, legislator and city commissioner, Anne Hajek. Go figure, right? NO business people showed up to speak against it, in fact two well known businessmen Craig Lloyd and Tom Walsh argued to leave it as is, just to work on controlling the decorum.

Councilor Stehly read an email from former mayor Munson who also said to leave it as is, but control it better.

The way I look at this, it will only make the meetings longer, you watch . . .

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