UPDATE: The meeting has been fixed. Last night it was missing about the last 30 minutes.
So I showed up late to the City Council meeting last night and did public input on some items towards the end and mysteriously, that part of the meeting is missing.
I’m going to be nice, or at least ‘TRY’ to be nice 🙂
I could go on rants about open government, the 1st Amendment, the violation of State Law, etc., oh I just did.
But how is that a city with a $700 million dollar yearly budget can’t rebroadcast their public meetings in their entirety?
When I look at the city council in action it reminds me of this image;
BUELLER? BUELLER? BUELLER? HAS ANYONE SEEN BUELLER?
The sad irony is the city could rebroadcast these meetings on YouTube, FOR FREE.
As I suspected a local (wealthy) business person gave the legislature and some city councilors a gentle nudge so he could operate a scooter rental business. While Mr. Holt’s testimony was about running a Ma and Pa business, we know he isn’t short on the cash flow. But that doesn’t matter to me, I actually support this kind of business and think it is something Sioux Falls should have.
What I found shocking was they want the scooters to operate ONLY on the sidewalks of downtown. WTF?
I know, when I first heard it today, I wondered if this was some kind of joke. Even councilors Nietzert and Kiley were like no can do. In other cities where these operate (I just witnessed them in San Diego) they must be operated on the street, because they can do around 25 miles per hour. And like riding a bicycle or skateboard on the sidewalk (which is illegal DTSF) it’s dangerous to pedestrians and the riders.
While I could go on a very long, or short rant (like I did tonight at the council meeting) about the idiocy of riding a motorized scooter on a sidewalk, I’m not going to go there. You get it, this isn’t rocket science, though physics are involved.
This is what happens when you have a mentally ill and dull legislature pass laws which they pass down to municipalities with little to no public input, not even from experts.Just how can my rich buddy start his own multiple injury scooter business.
And on top of it, the city councilors proposing this The Count and Heels, didn’t even bother to have a little public input on the topic.
Riding an electric powered scooter on the sidewalk for ‘safety’ is like scooping manure out of hog lot barefoot so you don’t get your 5-Buckle overboots dirty.
I know, they could turn Carnegie Town Hall into a comedy club if it wasn’t so tragic.
Item #6, Approval of Contracts, Sub-Item #9, $187K to the Multi-Cultural Center. Wondering when we are getting an update on the dismissal of the director, oh I forgot, we don’t have open government. Still waiting to see our open government consulting contract with Putin.
Sub-Item #25, (re) Painting new buses. About $9K a piece. What are these? Bentley’s?
Item #31, Village River (Bunker Ramp fiasco) is transferring their liquor license to a hotel (likely owned by Lamont). ‘Yeah, heading over to the Homewood Suites for a High Ball and a steak.’ For F’cksakes.
Item #64, 1st Reading, Motorized Foot Scooter (rentals). This is an update to state law. I am assuming that one of the National companies lobbied in Pierre to get added to the books. They are cool. Have fun.
Item #75, A RESOLUTION DESIGNATING THE OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER FOR THE CITY OF SIOUX FALLS, SD. Apparently this thing still exists? Who knew.
Item #77, citizen board appointments. Apparently we are appointing former AG and Judge, Larry Long to the Charter Revision Commission. Get out the popcorn, this is going to be fun (not really) watching him kill proposals. He apparently is the new CRC hit man? Maybe not?
Item #78, Appointing Greg Neitzert and Erica Beck to Med Mary task force. I’m still curious why we need a task force to read a 24 page law that already passed.
Item #5C, An Ordinance of the City of Sioux Falls, SD, Adding A Temporary Ordinance Regarding the Issuance of Local Medical Cannabis Establishment Zoning Permits and Licenses. Notice there is no recommendations. This will be an interesting convo.
Item #5 D-E, rework of Sioux Steel TIF. Apparently you can sit on your hands for a year, change stuff and come back and still get the developer welfare deal. Can you imagine going to your mortgage banker and setting up a loan to buy a house and postpone it for a year? Do you really believe you would get the same rate? Hell no. It may be better or worse, but either way, you would have to re-work it. Not with the city, developers can get millions in tax rebates and put that timeline out there for as long as they wish. Just look at Phillips to the Falls, the city held onto the land for around a decade, tax free, and handed out a TIF on top of it all to a developer. You would think the MOB is operating in Sioux Falls.
Item #5 F-G, TIF for Cherapa II, I guess the Planning Commission is going to busy Wednesday night handing out developer welfare while raising taxes on the rest of us. I find this TIF curious because the developer says it is for a parking ramp, but the councilors who had to wear knee pads at the informational meeting about it say it is about building roads, pipes and stuff. So which is it? Oh, that’s right, it’s for streets paved of BS.
Just curious, does anyone know who is starting a rental business for foot motorized scooters in Sioux Falls? Councilors Jensen and Erickson are bringing an ordinance change Tuesday night to license them. I am assuming they wouldn’t be doing this unless someone asked them to. Would have been really nice to get an informational to the public about it. When I was in California a few weeks ago they are everywhere.
Isn’t ironic that the city council has time to create ordinances for friend’s businesses that don’t even exist yet, but sit on their hands over a law that passed with around 70% of the vote. What a bunch of losers.
The newly elected chair, Curt Soehl, has quite the authoritarian streak. Yesterday while chairing several of the meetings he kept limiting public input to 15 minutes or about 3 people. They should not be scheduling these meetings back to back and should be spreading them out over a couple of days. But this does not give him an excuse to limit public input, it is a blatant violation of the 1st Amendment in reference to prior restraint.
While I thought maybe this was just a one-time decision someone told me he pulled the same trick today at the 10:30 AM, downtown library Working Session. Hey, I get it, they don’t like open government, that’s why they have meetings in the middle of the morning at the library instead of Carnegie, but now it seems they want to limit it also to the ones that can actually attend. I have never seen so much disdain towards the public’s opinion on matters. Yes, the council hasn’t been very open for a long time, but now there seems to be a lot of openness about NOT being open. They seem to wear it like a badge.
As for the meeting itself, it was a bunch of Covid money handouts to the Parks Department projects including more tennis courts, because you know, it is such a huge sport in Sioux Falls, LOL. I am often reminded of this when I drive by the parking lot at the Huether tennis center with 2-3 cars in the lot. Wondering if we will ever get our Half-Million back.
Speaking of open government and transparency, during the working session yesterday, I found it a bit bizarre that the council hasn’t asked the very people who wrote IM26 (Medical Marijuana) to be a part of the discussion. Wouldn’t you want the very people who wrote the successful measure to help advise you on what is in it? Or do we want to just do whatever we want to (basically sitting on our hands) then come up with regulations without their input then let them sue us? Seems counterproductive to me. Not sure the council or county commission has done their research (not likely) but the national movement to decriminalize marijuana has a lot of Benjamins behind it and they take their investments seriously.
This is what you get when you have a local government that works behind closed doors, is not transparent, limits public input and does the bidding of big business instead of the work of the people. All the hub-bub about TIFs, Mary Jane regulations, zoning, etc. doesn’t mean a hill of beans if you don’t operate government in the open. As I said last week, only crooks, scammers and schemers do business behind closed doors. Add authoritarians to that list.
l3wis 
