SF City Council

Councilor Litz’s stupid suggestion of the day

Once again, Bob Litz doesn’t disappoint by making another stupid suggestion; metal detectors at city hall. I will have to commend most of the councilors for commenting that it is not needed (now if we can just get rid of Knudson’s TV).

Mike Hall, city central services director, said that Council Chairman Bob Litz had asked him whether the city should consider adding a metal detector.

I find it extremely ironic that Litz, of all people, would suggest this safety measure. This is the same guy who got out of his car and twisted a teenager’s nose in a road rage incident. Maybe the councilors need to walk through a metal detector so citizens coming to the meetings know they are safe from them? I know I have felt intimidated by the plain clothes police officer.

At the informational meeting on Monday, councilor Jamison talked about an incident he got himself involved in that was a dispute between neighbors and a possible code violation. He thought it got a little hairy for awhile and suggested that maybe code enforcement should be ramped up. If anything it should be ramped down. I believe strongly in property rights, and if you own your property you should be able to do what you want on it – as long as you aren’t running a meth factory or brothel or endangering others in your neighborhood. I will admit, I have turned a neighbor in, BUT he was a renter and it was about his prototype 1971 Winnebago parked on the corner of a blind intersection, not on his rented property. I was afraid that someone would cruise through the intersection and plaster one of his young grandchildren to the road. Like I said, if it is a safey issue, you need to crack down, but if someone has a branch that hangs 12″ inches lower then it should – get over it.

I sometimes feel certain councilors and the mayor live pretty high on the hog and they feel that all citizens should have the same taste as they do when it comes to the way their property ‘looks’. I’m glad some of them have thousands of dollars to manicure their yard with tweezers but some of us are just as happy with a few dog turds and dandelions in our yards. So stop trying to push your personal tastes on us. Phillips to the Falls, the Facade easement program, million dollar historic windows on Pavilion, a $750,000 suspension bridge to nowhere and the unneeded bronze trim on the library are prime examples of that.

But back to the original topic of metal detectors; I think people in the comments section have summed it up pretty good;

StThor wrote:
The only thing that a metal detector before council meetings would accomplish is a giant inconvenience and irritation to regular citizens, while making the Council members feel like “big deals” too important to be worried about the niggling concerns of their “subjects”. Council members generally already have too much of the “fat head” syndrome.

Maybe we ought to have police get the Council members up in the morning, feed them breakfast, drive them around all day, always be at their shoulders, and tuck them in bed at night after they say their prayers. What a God-awful waste of money and personnel.

Remember, it wasn’t the “right-wing nuts” who were being watched who shot Kennedy, it was a Communist who wasn’t being watched.

AND
bijoutoo wrote:
No, it would be just one more small step toward closed meetings and loss of access. Why do we always have a panic reaction when some ‘crazy” person does something? Society is prone to restricting the majority because of a minority reaction and with it goes one more small measure of our freedom. In my lifetime more restrictions have developed from random acts than I can count. But guess what – random acts still occur and always will. Why not spend time on real problems: illegal immigration, fradulent elections, government waste, actual school curricula that teach useful skills, punishing criminals and bringing civility back to daily interaction? We are our brothers keeper to a point but sometime the brother should become his own keeper.
NOTE TO COUNCIL; I don’t own a gun, the only weapon I use is my big mouth.

Porky City

Letter to the Editor today in the Argus Leader;

There is nothing wrong with businesses becoming wealthy through hard work and mutually beneficial trade. Healthy businesses provide jobs, and competition keeps costs down for consumers. But when businesses start to lobby government for special regulatory favors and government spending projects to help pad their profits, they cease to be products of market forces.

A Sales Tax DECREASE will actually help local growth

Do you think city hall knows how to spend your hard earned money better then you? When the mayor and half of the council raised your sales tax, that’s exactly what they told you. They believe in the ‘trickle down economics’ model of taxation; increase taxes and give that additional revenue to special interests such as developers and contractors in hopes that money will ‘trickle back’ down to those original taxpayers in the form of jobs and growth.

It’s a backwards way of spending YOUR money to improve this community. There is a better way to move us forward; let taxpayers spend that money individually instead of handing it over to city bureaucrats and special interests.

They disguised this regressive tax increase as being progressive because they claim it will help our city grow. Hogwash.

 I’m all for new and maintained roads – I’m just against how they want to pay for them. New roads can be paid for through developer fees, which I fully support and roads can be maintained through the sales tax we already pay. Councilor Costello put it best in an Argus Leader article “It’s a shell game.” There is nothing stopping our mayor and the city council from spending those increased taxes on anything they want to. They sold it to us by saying we needed the new roads yet the CIP budget (which is also funded with sales tax) is packed full of unneeded projects that only benefit a few in our community not the greater good. We can cut the CIP easily and make up for this sales tax decrease. It will mandate the mayor and city council to spend within their means for at least one year (2010) and you also have to remember we may have up to four new councilors and a new mayor in 2010, lets break them in right by showing them they need to have some fiscal restraint.

Want REAL growth in our community? Stop overtaxing our citizens on necessities like food and utilities and let them spend that money on goods and services that helps ALL local businesses grow not just a select few lucky enough to get a handout from the city.

Local business drives our economy in the form of good jobs which promotes growth. Would Sioux Falls grow stronger if ALL local business were getting a piece of the pie and not just the special interests?

Scott L. Ehrisman

Co-Chair, Citizens for a Responsible Sales Tax

Theresa Stehly and I will be on the local radio talk show hosted by Jon Micheals, FORUM on all the Backyard Broadcasting stations Sunday Morning talking about the petition drive for the initiative to reduce sales taxes.

KELO AM and FM at 7 AM and all the other stations at 8 AM. I believe the interview lasted about 40 minutes.

Move up City Elections

From time to time I agree with Councilor Knudson, but too often not for the same reasons.

At the Charter Revision Meeting yesterday, (scroll down to the October 28, meeting, De speaks at the beginning) De suggested we move our city elections to June to save the city money and have a bigger voter turnout. I couldn’t agree more, because it would line up with the state primary elections.

De says she couldn’t understand why voter turnout was so low in the last city election compared to 2006.

Knudson cited preliminary statistics on voter turnout for city and special elections. In April 2006, 37.1 percent of voters cast ballots in the joint city/school election, compared to 14.1 percent for the city election last April.

Two words; Super Precincts.

The change to Super Precincts hurt voter turnout big time. Some people who intended to vote showed up to their old precinct and never voted. Others were so confused by it, they said the Hell with it. I can’t understand why some councilors are in such a state of denial about the super precincts debacle. Admit the mistake and move on already. Seriously.

Councilor Jamison was opposed to the move saying the council candidates would get lost in the shuffle. Bologna. I could see that if the election was during a presidential/national election but not a primary.

There was also mention that the city elections were bi-partisan. That one made me laugh. While there is members of both political parties and one independent (that I know of) sitting on the council, I can assure you that the councilors are very involved in their political parties.