SF City Council

Sioux Falls City Council Agenda May 17, 2022

l3wis May 15, 2022 5Comments

During the meetings this week on Tuesday there will be an installation ceremony at 2 PM, the informational at 4 PM and the Regular at 6 PM.

THE CALENDAR LINK

At the informational they will discuss April’s Finances and the 2035 Downtown Plan.

At the regular meeting there are several items on the consent agenda that need explanation, hopefully they will be pulled.

Item #6, Approval of Contracts,

Sub Item #2, Provide the City of Sioux Falls a network monitoring service for cyber security; Amendment to add addition of services: Expertise on Demand by Mandient and M365 Assessment, Effective upon full execution, Paragon Development Systems, $104K+ (Not sure if this is an evaluation or something else. But I find it interesting that PDS mostly serves the healthcare industry. There have been several councilors ask the administration over the past couple of years if our city is secure from cyber attacks with NO response. Apparently they are finally noodling around on the idea.

Sub Item #9, Water Reclamation Facility Improvements; Amendment to design agreement Carollo Engineers, Inc., $12 Million + (That’s quite the amendment! You could buy 3 new Pavilion roofs with that kind of money!)

Sub Item #16, Bishop Dudley Hospitality House, $120K (While I support funding the shelter, it would be nice to get a presentation as to what has been happening at the place and surrounding area the past year).

Item #52, RECONSIDERATION OF THE DEFERRAL OF A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY OF SIOUX FALLS APPROVING DIAGONAL PARKING ON S. GRANGE AVE. (This item was originally considered at the meeting of May 10, 2022 where the Council voted (8-0) to defer the item to June 7, 2022. If the motion to reconsider the deferral passes, then the motion to defer to June 7, 2022, will be considered again. The Council may vote to again approve the deferral, amend it, or vote it down. If voted down, the resolution itself will be considered by the Council.)

As I predicted, the diagonal parking is back for reconsideration for the 9th and Grange coffee shop. I was told that the property owner will be paying for the city to build the space. Hopefully we will get an answer at the meeting.

Sioux Falls City Council Agenda, May 10, 2022 & the Affordable Housing Surprise & the $30K Mentor Mandate

l3wis May 8, 2022 9Comments

Between the 4 PM and 6 PM meetings there is a recognition ceremony for the exiting councilors, Janet Brekke, Christine Erickson, and Rick Kiley at 5 PM.

MEETING CALENDAR

Informational Meeting • 4 PM

• Presentation from the Sioux Empire Housing Partnership Introduction by Hugo Barron, Sioux Empire Housing Partnership (not sure if this has anything to do with the plan to move 14 affordable houses to Pettigrew? )

The two neighborhoods will meet Monday, May 9th at 7:30 PM at the downtown Central Church to share their hopes for the future of the space.

Representatives from the City of Sioux Falls and the Sioux Falls School District will be at the meeting.

The unofficial story is that the school district is planning to move homes that they bought by Whittier (for its expansion) to this green space that they own. The neighborhoods (Cathedral and Pettigrew) did a survey with residents of the neighborhood that will be shared Monday Night. As I understand it the over 100 residents that responded said they want to keep it as green space.

I will try to attend the meeting to hear what the city and school district have to say about keeping this on the down low. I was told several months ago by a school district official that they had a plan to move the houses out of Whittier and re-use them within the city limits, they never mentioned this plan. My assumption was that they were just going to move them to various available lots in the core of the city, which I fully support, I see their intentions may be something else.

The worst part about this is the total lack of transparency. They kept this quiet because they knew there would be pushback.

Regular Meeting • 6 PM

Item #4, While four councilors are getting recognition awards, for some reason the Mayor’s Youth Council is getting an award, and they should! Anyone who could sit through those meetings after the Mayor’s friends kids were forced to go to them not only deserve an award but a college credit.

Item #7, Approval of Contracts, Sub-Item #16, Helpline Center Inc., $30K, To Provide Staffing and Support for the Sioux 52 Mentorship Initiative Agreement.

While I support mentorship, I was always under the assumption that if this gets public funding it should come from the School District coffers. But let’s remember, the Sioux 52 program was setup to be funded by the DT Rotary as a non-profit and not something taxpayers would kick into. This is also an initiative the mayor pushed as HIS pet project, and I commend him for it, so to suddenly shove it in the consent agenda as a spending item that the council has to approve without a presentation is speculative (see the email below). Just because it is coming out of the mayor’s office budget doesn’t mean this is FREE money. A better way to approach it would be for him to use his fundraising skills and clout to get this supplemented by non-profits (you know like church volunteers cleaning up after a tornado). Hopefully this will be pulled for discussion since this is just another backdoor approach for taxpayers to fund something on the mayor’s wish list.

Item #22, A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE CITY OF SIOUX FALLS TO SET ASIDE TWO ON-SALE LIQUOR LICENSES FROM THE ON-SALE LICENSE LOTTERY FOR USE AT THE CITY’S GOLF COURSES. (So the Pavilion which is ran by a private management company yet owned by the city and taxpayers went out and and bought a license (I think?) on the open market but the city courses that are owned by taxpayers and ran by a private contractor just get licenses for free? Very random. And since these are city owned licenses does that mean the city receives all the profits from liquor sales?

Items 30-35, RESOLUTIONS OF THE CITY OF SIOUX FALLS APPROVING DIAGONAL PARKING (I find it interesting that several of these project areas are not even finished yet and the city is suddenly being proactive about it. I’m all for it as it is a better use of space, but a part of me wonders in 10-20 years if we are going to need it. I have argued that the use of self-driving cars will eliminate the need for parking in our core.)