Sioux Falls

TenHaken Voicemail

I guess since Pitty Pat decided to put this up, I will to. I was unable to use the audio file.

Here is the transcript;

“Hey Theresa it’s Paul it’s about 4:15. Uh, say we had a discussion a while back when we were talking about water reclamation and your desire to go on my Facebook page and stir up comments and I told you how I didn’t appreciate that and I see it’s happening again and I think last time you mentioned it was to defend yourself. I see no reason for you to be using my page, my forum to advance your agenda in your position you have a Facebook page feel free to use it accordingly and not canabalize mine so we’re gonna have to block you from my page if that continues. So I would ask that you would show some respect for that. Thank You. Have a good day.”

To tell you the truth, I really think it is a lot of nitpicking, on both sides. I think it is sad when the mayor is telling councilors how to behave – then lying on FB about it. They are independently elected, just like him. But I have seen this in past administrations to. The last mayor would scold the councilors all the time. In fact one time he even threatened a councilor in a text message. The council is a separate legislative body, they SHOULD be a check to the mayor. There is of course a simple fix to this – STOP POSTING ON FACEBOOK and hold more public meetings and town halls and answer questions from constituents about issues in that forum. I still don’t understand what the mayor and certain councilors are so afraid of when it comes to meeting with citizens in public? Are they scared they can’t answer the questions? Or is it just an incredible disdain for transparency? I think it is a little bit of both.

Weekly Tidbits

CORY & SD VOICE WILL WIN THEIR CASE

Let’s just chalk it up to another failure in state government;

To refresh your memories, I am challenging two main points of state petition law: first, 2019 House Bill 1094, Rep. Jon Hansen’s (R-25/Dell Rapids) circulator badge and registry scheme now mostly encapsulated in SDCL 2-1-1.3–2.1.1.9, and the state’s requirement that initiative petitions be submitted a full year before the election at which you would get to vote on them.

There are so many constitutional issues with the legislation, I don’t even know where to start. If I had to make a bet on this, I would put $1K down in the first Aberdeen telephone booth video lottery casino I could find that they will win, and win huge.

I sometimes wonder if SD State Legislators take there pocket US Constitutions (if they have ever had one) and burn it before the first day of session.

MINNEHAHA COUNTY COMMISSION SAYS ONE EMT IS A-OK

I still have not figured out why they decided to go for this in the biggest county in the state;

AMBULANCE ORDINANCE HEARING
Mr. Gearman gave a briefing on the proposed amendments as follows: Article 2, Section 6 updating language to align with South Dakota law and administrative rule; Article 6 to remove the requirement of consent and a written agreement between two licensees for special events; and Article 14 updating language to align with South Dakota law and administrative rule regarding minimum personnel requirements Other minor changes were made for the purposes of consistency and formatting. Speaking in favor of the amendments, Dr. Jeff Luther, Rural Ambulance Quality Assurance Director, explained that he believes reducing the requirement from two emergency medical technicians (EMT) to one EMT would not cause a decrease in quality. Tim Haight, 3403 W 93rd Street, Sioux Falls, inquired about the proposed amendment to Article 6. Maggie Gillespie, Senior Deputy State’s Attorney, responded to Mr. Haight’s question explaining that he would need to contact his own legal counsel if he had legal questions, and that the change to Article 6 only removes the requirement to obtain consent from the existing service area ambulance service for a special event. Jay Masur, 25968 476th Ave, Sioux Falls, Med-Star Paramedic Ambulance President & CEO, spoke in opposition to lowering the number of EMTs. Dr. Luther responded to the concerns brought forward by Mr. Masur explaining that smaller ambulance services struggle to find enough people to serve. Therefore, the requirement of two EMTs made it hard to operate. Additionally, many Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Deputies are trained EMTs with impressive response times. Mr. Gearman explained that the ordinance is a minimum standard. Ambulance services may choose to set their standards at any level they want as long as the minimum is met. MOTION by Karsky, seconded by Barth, to approve Ordinance MC31-6-19, the 2019 Ground Ambulance Licensing Ordinance. By roll call vote: 5 ayes. The entire Ordinance is on file and available for inspection at the County Auditor’s Office.

I think it is a cost saving measure for the for profit ambulance services. It will be interesting to see how staffing changes.

SOUTH DAKOTA DEMOCRATIC PARTY FINALLY GETS THEIR SH*T TOGETHER

So this was pretty cool;

The state party’s Central Committee elected Randy Seiler to serve as the chair on Saturday, according to a party announcement. Seiler, the party’s vice chair, has been serving as the interim chair since Paula Hawks resigned as chair in September. SDDP Executive Director Stacey Burnette jointly resigned with Hawks.

Isn’t it crazy that stuff is not so bad with the Dem party in SD?  I kind of wonder what kind of BS has been concocted over the past couple of years. I hope in the name of transparency the party tells us what has been going on and how they are going to fix it. This could be a great moment for them rooting out the corruption. As an Indy, I have never liked the party system. It just seems like a system that needs to go away and make government on all levels non-partisan. I had a friend tell me once that he doesn’t belong to ‘clubs’ because they seem to ‘clubby’ with lots of rules and other stupid crap. It always made me laugh, because I agree.

CITY SHUTS OFF EMERGENCY SIRENS FOR THE WINTER

I just think this is weird. Why wouldn’t you want to make sure they work all year long? There are other ‘disasters’ you might want to warn citizens about in the winter besides tornados. I almost wonder if this has to do with the embarrassment of the tornado warning system failing this summer and they are trying to minimize the failure. Hey, McFly, that is over and done with, time to move on and make sure they work moving forward. Don’t people learn from their mistakes anymore?

WHO IS BEHIND THE STACE NELSON CASE

The rumor mill has been on full cycle that the SD GOP is behind going after Nelson about blocking people of FB. They have been wanting to get Stace for his big mouth for years, and I think they want to bury him with this Federal case. I think it is funny how the SD GOP is concerned about the 1st Amendment when they want to hurt someone, but the rest of the time they are the most secretive party of all time. And corrupt. If you want to apply these rules to Nelson, which I think that is a good thing, you also have to follow them to. So if you want to make sure politicians are not blocking people on FB, maybe in the next session you should pass sweeping open meeting transparency laws . . . wait, maybe that is why Stace in trouble, he told us about the warts of the GOP.

UPDATE II: JazzFest Killed

UPDATE II: I’m hearing from a couple of sources that the executive director of SFJB actually resigned last week. I’m not sure if that is true, since he is still listed on their webpage, but it may explain why they decided to pull back. Most people may not know it, but planning for JF takes all year, and the most of the acts are already booked by January or February, they may have done no plans. If anyone knows differently let me know.

UPDATE: The story going around is that JF lost significant money this past year, which doesn’t surprise me. Having to pay for generators, bad weather damaging stuff, no major acts and having the headliner cancel probably did it in. I’ve even heard they are so broke from it that they may have to hand over the concert series they hold at the Orpheum to the Pavilion management, but we will have to see what happens. I think they ‘could’ bring it back in 2021 but would still need to do something like a small Saturday night concert this summer and bill it as a ‘mini’ JF just to keep it relevant. But with the money situation, I’m not sure if that is even possible.

I also have heard that people are blaming Mayor TenHaken because of the proposed ordinance to charge for police assistance. I guess he has been on the horn with certain people mad about the blame game. I won’t defend PTH on much, but it really isn’t his fault. Sure the proposal is stupid and ridiculous, but the city council hasn’t ironed out the details yet and may vote it down anyway IF it is even brought forward. So while the ordinance proposal is moronic, it hasn’t happened yet. I was actually surprised he was so annoyed with it, I would just blow it off.

As you have heard in the news, JazzFest has ended (but will consider doing it in 2021). I think once you go there, you can never recover.

It saddens me for several reasons, I assisted with JF for several years in different roles with graphic design work, helping to design the logo two years, and designing countless other items for them. It was always a tradition for me, for at least 20 years. I will miss it.

Some think it may have to do with the city council considering charging for police assistance, but I think it really has to do with all the problems from this past festival and low attendance, and former director Rob Joyce leaving. It of course has never been the same since Janoct Adja died 🙂 We may never know. I think that this city has been going towards more ‘family friendly’ festivals lately (not that JF wasn’t) and it is just hard to put on these kind of large events anymore.

I actually think the city council has the votes to either kill the police ordinance, or at least reduce the proposed fee of $70 an hour per officer significantly. I would like for them to pass an ordinance that only charges ‘For-Profit’ events for police assistance and leave the non-profit’s exempt.

As we know these events bring in huge economic impact that can cover the police costs, it is just a matter of the city budgeting for it and paying the officers for these duties. Which is easily done instead of continuing to screw the police union.

Isn’t ironic that our mayor was in DC yesterday bragging about how he doesn’t want to burden the FOR-PROFIT telecoms (who make billions a year) with high fees for 5G poles then turns around and depends on volunteers to clean up after tornados, doesn’t plow our streets and now wants to charge for police assistance (even though they have plenty of money in the budget for it). This administration’s priorities are messed up, and you will see that when the $21.5 million dollar TIF for a private developer gets passed with NO evidence or studies proving TIFs provide economic impact to our city. The arts and other non-profit events in Sioux Falls have already had numerous studies showing their impact, but who has time to read that stuff? For TIFs and telecom handouts we’ll just take your word.

UPDATE: Mayor TenHaken tells councilor Stehly he will block her from FB

Theresa played me a voicemail tonight that had our mayor telling her he would ‘block her from his facebook page’.

I heard the message. It was him. No doubt. It had something to do with water reclamation and posting comments on his FB page.

But he was on FB last night proclaiming he didn’t do it;

‘There are no mean emails, voicemails, or the like here.’

While I would agree he wasn’t mean (he was actually pretty calm) he did say he would block her. I guess as an elected official if someone was accusing me of something and I was in doubt about it, I would get on the horn and ask for the proof. Then if I truly did do it (the VM is from January I believe) I would apologize and move on.

“It’s Better to Beg for Forgiveness than to Ask for Permission”

Now this happened. I commented on the page this morning that they should remove SF Politics from FB and start a blog where they can moderate comments like I do here. Apparently they are taking my advice.