South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

Sioux Falls Transit

Curt Soehl Cynthia Mickelson SF City Council Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Transit Washington Pavilion

Washington Pavilion, Transparency and FREE youth bus rides

l3wis 8Comments

During the Informational meeting yesterday I spoke about the Pavilion’s slow growth in concert revenue and memberships as well as charging to attend regional art shows. (FF: 49:20) Below is a graphic of the current annual report.

During the city council regular meeting I talked about transparency in government (FF: 7:00) and the FREE youth bus rides (FF: 15:10). For clarification, several advocacy groups have been pushing for this for over a decade. Last Fall a couple people from those groups reached out to me to blog about it. I then reached out to former SF School board president Cynthia Mickelson who currently still serves on the board. She thought it was a good idea since the school district has been struggling with their own bus system and she reached out to councilor Curt Soehl and they have been working diligently to get it pushed through the transit board. A big thank you to both of them for their diligence.

Mayor TenHaken SF City Council Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Transit Transportation

Mayor TenHaken walks out of the Council Meeting during public input to Tweet

l3wis 3Comments

Ironically, PTH had nothing to do with this move. This was recommended by the Public Transit board last month and was actually in partnership with a recommendation from former SF School Board President Cynthia Mickelson after I texted her on November 20, 2021. Cynthia reached out to Councilor Soehl about it and I never heard a peep until last week when it appeared on the agenda.

I’m happy they are moving forward. Many former board members have told me they have been working on this for around a decade.

Paratransit SF City Council Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Transit Transportation

Sioux Falls City Council will finally approve FREE youth bus rides all year long

l3wis 4Comments

UPDATE: Public Transit advocates have told me they were aware of the changes, BUT were never given a timeline when they would go in effect so it comes as a pleasant surprise to them.

If I am reading this correctly it looks like the mayor wants to give free rides to youth on public transit all year long (item #35);

I’m glad to see they will be attempting to make this change. Rapid City has done it for several years. This will also alleviate some strain on the School District’s bussing system. While the mayor is the sponsor, I don’t think there will be any no votes on this.

It is a little disappointing that the council did not bring this forward considering they are 1) the policy body and 2) been urged by advocates for several years to make this change. Apparently the mayor got the message while the council is still hanging out in the cornfields looking for ways to getting out of forming policy on things like the bunker ramp and tornado sirens.

Paratransit Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Transit

UPDATE: Public Transit in Sioux Falls gets worse

l3wis 2Comments

UPDATE: Notice the CIP that was released today (the mayor dropped it in the councilors mailboxes at Carnegie). While their is plenty of money for NEW streets and pools no mention of public transit.

It’s bad enough that transit routes don’t go throughout the entire city, NO Sunday service and now this;

Saturday service will end at 3 p.m. for SAM’s two Saturday crosstown routes, as well as SAM On Demand rides and paratransit services, shaving about two and a half hours of of the service’s Saturday hours starting July 2.

I have often argued that a city of our size should have a transit system that runs 7 days a week, runs throughout the entire city and allow minors to ride for FREE all year long. In Kansas City they have been running a program that gives free rides to people who maintain employment status and other circumstances.

It often surprises me when we dump millions into special interest sports and parking ramps and virtually ignore improving public transit.

Mayor TenHaken Paratransit SF City Council Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Transit Transportation

Mayor TenHaken’s SOC Address ends in a very unusual way

l3wis 4Comments


You won’t see it on the end of the video we downloaded (it was edited out) but as you can see from the screenshot below it had an unusual ending;


The city did eventually upload to their YouTube channel, but before that it was ONLY on FB. Bruce Danielson who owns and operates the SouthDacola YouTube channel that I link to frequently downloads from FB videos. He does NOT and never has had a FB account, so he was surprised when at the end of the SOC address video post on the City’s official FB page an ad/video for some kind of butt spray paint appears. Not sure why that happened, but it makes you wonder who uploaded the video to FB:) Was it a city employee or one of Paul’s campaign goons? And Bruce, if you are secretly looking for butt spray paint, we need to have a serious heart to heart conversation. LMFAO!



MAYOR TENHAKEN WANTS TO GIVE FREE YOUTH RIDES

I guess I missed this in his address;



TenHaken announced he will be proposing to the Public Transit Advisory Board and City Council to make the public transit system free to kids citywide.


Hey great idea, wonder where it came from? Oh that’s right, I wrote about it here. I won’t take credit, I was alerted about this from a citizen advocate, Cathy Brechtelsbauer, and after I blogged about it I contacted Sioux Falls School Board President Cynthia Mickelson about Cathy’s idea and she started collaborating with a couple of city councilors, as far as I know they have already been trying to draw up an ordinance to do it, but like most of Poops ideas he lifts them from other people, you know like precincts, uh, I mean, report-to-work stations 🙂

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