Sioux Falls City Council to propose Charter Amendments
l3wis Since the CRC rejected proposals from citizens the council is going to take a stab at it. While I don’t agree with some of the proposals, I do commend them for putting it on the ballot and letting the voters decide instead of them since most of their amendments are bad ideas like runoffs in council races and moving public input to the back of the meeting.
Let’s look at the proposals, mostly coming from a couple of short-timers;
Item #13, Raising mayoral pay to be in line with director pay ($195K). This is of course is a back door effort to raise councilor pay. Council pay I believe is 15% of mayoral pay, but don’t quote me on that, which would raise their salaries to $29K up $10K a year. Councilors have been butt hurt for a long time because they don’t get paid what the county commissioners do. I actually think $19K a year is too much for the bare minimum of work they do. I actually think director pay should be in line with mayoral pay, not the other way around. Sioux Falls pays directors better than almost any city in the region, and we are the only city with a Medical Director that happens to be the highest paid city employee. If this goes to voters it will fail at least by 60% if not more.
Item #14, City Council terminating city attorney. Ironically they are also proposing allowing the city council to fire the city attorney. I support this because the City Attorney should be representing the city with the best interest of the taxpayers NOT the mayor or even the city council. I have even suggested that the City Attorney and Police Chief should be elected. I’m not sure how citizens would vote on this, it could be close. I think some people feel that since the mayor appoints the city attorney he should be the only one to fire him. That is a misconception, because the council already has to approve the appointment so they should be able to fire the city attorney also. I heard a rumor that this is coming up because our current head city attorney really blows at his job and the council has been very frustrated with him.
Item #15, Bounce Back for head city attorney. The city council has been on this kick lately of bouncing directors back. It’s complete BS! Directors are NOT union employees, so they have no protections if terminated. The reason is because they have a 6-Figure salary and enormous benefits package. By allowing them to ‘bounce back’ to their previous job seems like a non-manager union perk. Unfortunately this item WILL NOT BE VOTED ON BY CITIZENS, THIS IS A COUNCIL DECISION. My argument is that in the private sector when Bob gets promoted to a department manager after being an assistant manager, people below him get promoted, and if he fails at the job and gets put back in his old position it has a domino effect on the employees below him which can cause a lot of resentment and contribute to low morale. In the real world when you apply to be a manager and you can’t handle the job, you go bye bye or move to another department. Why would the city want to keep on a city attorney who is NOT qualified to be the lead attorney but good enough for an assistant? If you can’t cut it as the top city attorney, you should get your walking papers.
Like I said already, I’m glad to see the council is allowing the citizens to vote on the first two items, I just think they are lousy ideas that will mostly fail, proving just out of touch our supposed leaders are.
