The Parks Department (or probably the mayor’s office) is building a fitness pad park by 26th and Southeastern. Many have asked ‘how long will the equipment last’? I went by the park yesterday while they were installing the equipment in the ground. While the frames of the stationary bikes and equipment are made of very durable cast steel the rest of it is plastic. Even with normal wear and tear and the weather this stuff will have trouble lasting more then a few seasons but it’s the vandals that concern me more.
An attorney said to me last week that if there has been this much silence from the city AND the defendant it is likely they are in mediation to settle.
Some would argue the city has legal standing in what they are doing, and on some level they do, but some would also argue that the constitutional and federal rights of the defendant is a much stronger case.
What would a possible settlement look like?
I don’t know, because to be honest with you I have never had to deal with such a thing, and I haven’t combed through every detail of the case.
In the simplest terms the city will probably allow him to finish the house and not demolish it, because as Judge Lange stated that would be a total waste, or as someone stated to me, tearing down the house would be the ultimate dick move by the city.
I don’t think the city has many other options.
COUNTY COMMISSIONS AND CITY COUNCIL HAVE BECOME DEFERRAL QUEENS!
The heck with the rubber stamps these bodies have, they have exchanged them for unexpected vacations and deferrals. Have you noticed lately that when the Lincoln and Minnehaha Commissions as well as the Sioux Falls City Council have to make an important decision one of the members will skip the meeting for a ‘scheduled’ vacation or they end up deferring it.
I wonder if any of them realize that when you put off an important decision it makes that ultimate final decision much harder for the public to swallow. Look at Pettigrew neighborhood. Past mayors, councils, officers and administrators have failed to make a dent over the past 30 years and the problem has gotten worse and the mayor calling 20% of the residents in Pettigrew alcoholics doesn’t help the situation.
As I have told councilors and mayors for the past 20 years, if you can’t do the job or are afraid to the job please resign so we can replace you with someone that can. I will agree that personal attacks that are unwarranted towards elected officials is unacceptable, but attacking your competence has always been free game. This has nothing to do with the character of those supposed leaders, it has to do with their courage, or the lack of.
“Local government is the catalyst for community progress, and I know our City’s participation in the City Data Alliance will help us double down on our data efforts to ultimately benefit residents.”
So you have been participating in this program for several years now, wondering when you are going to start sharing those benefits with the citizens?
I also found it interesting that out of the 11 American mayors participating only one was Republican, TenHaken, and one Indy (who leans Democrat). All the other mayors were Democrat.
UPDATE: A South DaCola foot soldier pointed out to me after posting this earlier today that there is another issue with this trip.
The city pays a consultant for the software that helps with sharing data thru the Bloomberg initiative. As I understand it, that money DOES NOT go towards trips city employees or elected officials may take in coordination with Bloomberg.
‘IF’ and only ‘IF’ Bloomberg Philanthropies paid for the trip and NOT the taxpayers of Sioux Falls that is an ethics violation because of quid pro quo. By Bloomberg providing an all expense paid trip to the mayor of Sioux Falls, or ANY mayor or municipal employee for that matter, there is an appearance that Bloomberg provides these conferences and in return gets to use the data from the city, probably even sell it.
I am NOT sure who paid for the trip, but if it was Bloomberg, Paul and his cohorts have some explaining to do.
I’m wondering when they are going to start sharing information and data with the citizens?
I understand the concept behind the data sharing, but what I am curious about is how this is helping us in Sioux Falls? There have been NO major initiatives by this administration to use the data sharing with Bloomberg to improve our city. On Demand is a joke and will be repealed, so that doesn’t really count. But when it comes to crime, neighborhood cleanup, infrastructure, transparency, climate change, housing and better wages we sit at a standstill. Heck, we can’t even approve a mural!
So what do we get when the 3 most important people in city government spend a week yucking it up with Bloomberg?
So what do most people do if they are in a hurry? They say ‘F’ck it’ and move on. If someone is in a hurry and they find a parking spot DTSF but don’t have any change to feed the meter (that doesn’t have a CC reader) they will probably not go looking for another spot and just risk the ticket. Maybe that is what the city is hoping for.
GRABAR: I think so. Essentially, parking enforcement serves as a subset of what is now known as revenue-driven policing. And the idea here is that cities take advantage of these parking laws to try and get as much money out of people as possible, but not in the way that you would think, right? I mean, I think this is a common misconception. Meter rates are actually, for the most part, pretty low in most cities, which is to say they are below the market clearing price that would create empty spaces on every block. Most cities make more money from illegal parking fines than they do from meters and garage taxes put together. So, for example, New York City in 2015 made $565 million in parking fines. It’s the biggest category of fines that the city issues. But they made just $200 million from parking meters.
So what’s essentially being run here – and I don’t know if cities are conscious of this – is a system that is poorly designed that almost seems like the incentives are in favor of illegal parking because for the city, that’s where they make their money.
I would have loved to been a fly on the wall when the Parking Director, Matt Nelson and Mayor TenHaken had a conversation about getting creative with raising more parking fees. Probably went something like this;
Nelson says, “Paul, we just gotta find a way to get people to park in the ramps more.”
TenHaken responds, “Thank goodness I stopped that naked Indian mural, because that certainly would have drove drivers away.”
l3wis 
