Sioux Falls

It’s back to the well and is the well is drying up?

Guest Post by Bruce Danielson

Here we go again, let’s build up hysteria and then spend millions of dollars under the table, over the table and in closed back rooms but claim transparency. It’s now 2019 and let’s remember and discover what’s new in the city of Sioux Falls. We see the same things in every project of dubious or questionable value to the town.

Let’s review a few:

The City Center Administration Building had to be built because a planning department employee claimed he had pee running down his City Hall basement office wall.

An indoor swimming pool our town could not live without so it was built on land loaned to the City of Sioux Falls and could be repossessed by the real land owner, the Federal government at any time (and probably will once the VA expands some more).

An event center designed to suck every bit of money out of the community to the benefit of the construction and the out of town management companies. Then to top it all off, put it in a location guaranteed to NOT help the struggling locally owned businesses of Sioux Falls.

The different emergency for sewer and water infrastructure bonding of over $300 million dollars to benefit a set of special developers and to hide the disastrous City Center HVAC system mistakes.

The parking ramp that had to be built, even if it does bleed the Parking Enterprise fund down to nothing keeping us from having properly maintained streets to drive to the parking spots. To do this we saw illegal asbestos removal, a building collapsed, a man die, and a developer defaulting, what a trifecta all in the name of ___________ (you fill in the blank). Now we have to spend $1.5 million of 2nd penny infrastructure money to protect the building that should have never been built. WE have to protect our investment but whose head will roll because of this? By the way, where is the Parking Director Matt Nelson these days?

Now have you seen the strange looking new machine being hauled around town lately? (At the top of the page)

This recent Vermeer Grinder – Shredder purchase for $964,270 by the city is for use in grinding trees at the landfill and around Sioux Falls. Do you know what is wrong about this purchase? Sioux Falls has an agreement to have a private business do this for FREE. Hidden in plain sight (if you can find the Consent Agenda of the July 5th, 2019 Council meeting) is contract 19-4165. Our administration spent almost $1 million dollars of 2nd penny without any discussion. Not only do we take away money from the pothole budget, but we take work away from a private business who was doing the city’s shredding to undercut the limited market the business has developed.

Once again, a city of Sioux Falls administration, pretending to be legitimate, upstanding, honest, trustworthy (is it an “and” or an “or”) TRANSPARENT is screwing all of us and trying to hide the evidence.

It’s 2nd penny be damned, full steam ahead on bonding everything. Get ready for the next bonding project(s) that never were bonded before. This is to keep the bonding companies and their supporters happy. You even see it in the Charter Revision Commission this year. Now consider the new Southeast fire station, street projects (remember the 2nd penny was created so streets would NEVER be bonded), the new training center and more are going to be in the next go round of bonding coming to a city council near you. So say good bye to getting your potholes repaired. Expect to see your locally owned employer or your privately owned business going down with city hall’s wall pee as more of the city’s limited funds are taken over by the bonding companies, all for another edifice coming to you.

Sioux Falls City Council Agenda, Nov 12, 2019

Sioux Falls Informational Meeting, 4 PM

Some really good presentations, this will probably be better than the regular Council Meeting.

The first presentation is on light pole corrosion. Here is the full report. I found this statement interesting;

Corrosion damage noticed when replacing poles hit by vehicles

So it seems there have been NO regular inspections of the light poles. Hopefully a councilor will ask about this during the meeting.

The 2nd Presentation is on the upcoming Municipal election this Spring. City Clerk Greco will give the presentation. Here is the full report.

Some important dates are circulation of petitions and turning them in. You can pick them up on Friday, January 31, 2020 and turn them in by Friday February 28, 5 PM. Take note David Zokaites.

They also split a precinct in half in Lincoln County.

There is also a handy website link for all of us local government nerds. Notice there are NO links to the candidates intent to run forms. So far three candidates have filed.

The last presentation is juicy, it is questions about the Bunker Ramp. Here is the full presentation.

In the PDF, you will notice there is NO designation on who answered these questions from the administration. I have been told it is COS Erica Beck. Here is some highlights.

There is parking demand for nearby tenants downtown, and we want to meet those needs with a safe property.

LOL. The parking ramp across the street to the South is often NOT full.

Oh, and the city has determined that we need to take the ‘Contractor’s’ advice. Isn’t that interesting. A contractor who had to take down a crane and get screwed out of building a multi-million dollar hotel all of sudden is advising us on how to fill the holes.

We also need a generator to run needed safety lights, signage, etc. This could all be done by solar polar, and they know it. Instead of investing in this, they should invest in a solar system.

Question #3 is an interesting one, and the answer is even more intriguing;

Question 3: Can you provide the change order requests clarifying services to be covered?

No. Formal change orders for the $1.5 million are expected to be submitted, reviewed, and noticed to the City Council sometime in December and available for inspection at that time. The City is unable to officially move forward with change orders until after the effective date of the increase in the capital budget.

The administration is ALSO suggesting there will be MORE change orders. Oh, GOODY! And there is NO allocated monies for improving the facade. Maybe some artists will submit an another Third-Eye Deer Mural FOR FREE that will be painted over?

They also guarantee that the parking enterprise fund is sustainable. That one made me keel over in laughter. They also say they don’t expect further legal costs. Yeah, and monkeys will fly out of my ass.

Regular City Council Meeting • 7 PM

Item #6, Approval of Contracts.

HR wants more money for ‘Leadership’ training.

I guess we are paying Sanford for child care educational training. How nice. Are they also giving training on Medicare fraud?

Item #14, Resolution to approve the extra money for the parking ramp. I think this will pass, but I also think there may be an amendment to reduce the amount (Which I think will fail).

Item #16, Ordinance, 2nd Reading. Adding s supplemental appropriation of $3 million for snow removal and operations thru the end of the year. Now they may have the money to sand the streets when a 1/4″ of ice on them.

UPDATE: 2nd Penny will have to be used to Support Bunker Ramp

Reader submission

You can say what you want about Stehly, but she warned that the Parking Department Enterprise Funds would NOT be able to support the bond payments for the Bunker Ramp, and this is why we used the 2nd Penny Road Funds for collateral;

Mayor Paul TenHaken wants the City Council to dip further into the city parking fund to come up with another $1.5 million, which his administration says is needed to open the ramp. Using that cash would drain the account the city is using to pay back the $18.5 million it borrowed to build the ramp, making it more likely that the city could need to dip into tax dollars to pay off the debt. 

Once again folks, we are dipping into our infrastructure funds for projects that have nothing to do with needed infrastructure.

UPDATE: Joe Sneve found this great quote from TenHaken;

“Unfortunately, the public doesn’t have all the facts and getting at the ones the taxpayers do have has been a challenge. The City government needs to be open and transparent with taxpayer dollars, which includes settlements like the one in question. We all can agree that bringing openness to historically closed door processes of City government is a great move,” Paul TenHaken told KSFY News while campaigning for mayor.

Egyptian Ambassador Press Conference

Saturday, November 9th, 2019 • 10 AM

Rep. Michael Saba (Dist. 9) has asked me to assist in setting up a special Saturday Press Conference in Sioux Falls to announce first results of this week’s Egyptian delegation trip to South Dakota led by Ambassador Hamdi Saleh.

“The purpose for this trip has been to buy products” Saba states “Ambassador Saleh has stressed this trip is to ship South Dakota products including commodities such as soybeans, corn and agricultural technology directly to Egypt from us.”

Rep. Saba has been traveling with the delegation from Sioux Falls to Brookings, Watertown and Aberdeen to cement relationships including purchase agreements. This week’s weather issues have not cooled the delegation’s interest in South Dakota commodities, education opportunities and products. The Egyptian trade delegation is building strong ties in South Dakota this week not only for today but for years to come.

The press conference is in the planned for the delegation at:

Sioux Falls Development Foundation (use the North door entrance)

200 N. Phillips Ave

Suite 101

Sioux Falls, SD 57104

Saturday, November 9th, 2019 at 10:00am

Change Anything you want (Guest Post, Bruce Danielson)

Let’s get this out of the way right now, the Charter Revision Commission as currently composed and directed by the city government is set up to be a place where things go to die. It doesn’t matter what the proposed idea is, it should just die if the administration currently in power deems it. The CRC will just read their prepared scripts and do what they are told.

This year’s CRC fun involves the excuse Triple Check the Charter petition process is to blame for their inaction. We’ll disagree on this, Justin Smith said it plainly in the last go round 2 years ago, their job is to make sure thing don’t go on the ballot because the public might just vote for the change. So most of the work of the CRC is going down (as grandpa would say) “the crapper” as expected.

The November 6th, 2019 CRC meeting carried on the tradition of inaction by Justin Smith missing from the meeting this time and Bob Thimjon was missing from the last one so items can’t be fully discussed or ruled on. With Justin Smith missing, vice chair Pauline Poletes opened the meeting with a clarification of her personal role and of course Anne Hajek, not to be outdone, declares she also is there for the citizens. OK, they clarified their “personal” positions in a less than positive way. I wonder what brought that on?

As you watch the meeting video, note how different members seem to be reading a canned speech to make sure the right words are said. Who wrote the commissioner’s speeches? If the presenter really felt strongly about an issue, why did he need to read a speech?

Oh speaking of reading a funky smelling speech, let’s discuss the funkmaster of the city council showing up to funk up the proceedings. Greg Neitzert had to read from his notebook to make sure he told us of his undying love for all things administration. His statement “if you were to remove the mayor as a member of the City Council, I mean really what this comes down to is I think you have a small group of people that are still angry about two or three votes in the last ten years and their answer is to essentially upend city government…” I guess he is talking about we, who own the government, being upset by four mayors who have increasingly ignored their responsibility to protect the public’s right to know. We have watched Greg Neitzert go from begging us to help him run for office to now pretending he doesn’t know the people who helped him get his bigshot position as protector of PTH and TJ Typeover. BTW, did they help him write his speech?

There’s an issue brought up by Joe Kirby we’re torn about, the 6 month residency requirement. The original proposal would have prevented former Harrisburg sometime voter, Ritch Nobles, from running in 2016 for an At-Large spot. If the full implementation of the proposal were in place in 2016, Marshall Selberg would not have been able to take a seat as the SW District Councilor because he was still registered as a NW voter until a few days before the election. Does it matter if Marshall moves to a district he could win in and or does it matter if Ritch Nobles moves to Sioux Falls just so (as he admitted) he could run for city council?

All in all, the references to Triple Check was a confirmation the public was right in demanding changes because the Charter Revision Commission is a waste of time and energy if real changes are necessary to the home rule charter.