Sioux Falls

UPDATE: As Majority of Sioux Falls City Council prepares to skewer Stehly, they trip over procedure

l3wis September 18, 2019 8Comments

UPDATE: Belfrage misses the point entirely;

Can someone check on Councilor Starr and see if he’s lost his voice? He left Stehly twisting in the wind without a word.

Hey, McFly, maybe Starr didn’t 2nd the motion, because Stehly got to make her point without the rest of the council beating her up? And that is what exactly what happened. If anyone looked like a winner after the motion didn’t receive a 2nd, it was Theresa, not Paul.

The last item of the night at the city council meeting was under new business and Stehly’s motion to encourage the city to help with storm cleanup. Stehly was actually attempting to amend the motion to actually THANK the city for helping (even though the messaging didn’t align with that from the administration). She never got there, but the public did.

Several people came up to say the city DID help and were thankful, but confused and disappointed with the communication of this help.

So it came time to 2nd Stehly’s motion and NO one did. This killed it, which killed the discussion.

Mission accomplished anyway.

Mayor was told by the public that he needs to be better at planning for disasters and communication. I agree. No need to fight about political grandstanding. Tell it like it is. Help each other and communicate better. End of discussion.

It was refreshing.

I wonder who from the city council staff had to stay late and shred all the vitriol that didn’t get used? Hopefully the mayor gives them one of his lucky coins.

At first I was confused. Then I had a very good laugh. Well played councilor ‘X’. Well played.

Sioux Falls Citizens have little to NO input on city budget

l3wis September 18, 2019 11Comments

During the last city council race, candidate Nick Weiland suggested that the city implement participatory budgeting. It’s not a new concept, but something that has evolved over the years thru technology.

When Councilor Stehly attended the NLC’s conference a few years ago, she also was introduced to the concept.

We don’t have it in Sioux Falls, in fact, we don’t even have anything that comes close.

I have been following city budgets for the past 13 years, all I have ever seen is a massive growth in government and fewer services for that growth. I believe if citizens were engaged from the get go, those budgets would shrink and we would get more bang and more services (that actually help people) for the buck. Instead we allow city employees shape the budget, and hand it over to the mayor, in which he hands off to the council and us citizens get about 20 minutes for input. It’s disgusting.

First off, according to Charter, the city council should be forming the budget from input from city directors AND citizens. This should be a 12 month, all-year process. Instead they take very little input from citizens, pack it full of non-profit and corporate welfare giveaways, and leave us with a half-mile bike trail expansion and a cement Ping-Pong table.

One reason I didn’t show up last night is because by that time it was too late, the budget was most likely formed MONTHS ago behind closed doors in the mayor’s office. My five minutes don’t mean squat.

But let’s look at the explosive nature of our budget. In 2016 our budget was $471 Million, this year it is $545 Million, a 15% increase in 4 years. Has your wages increased that much? What about your cost of living? In an essence, if you were making $40K in 2016, your wages would be $46K in 2020, a $1,500 raise each year for 4 years. Has that happened in your life? Highly unlikely.

Until the city council (our true representatives of citizens) and the citizens actually have year-long input into the budget, all it represents is growing government for the mayor’s corporate trough friends.

Just look at the people defending the mayor’s mis-communication about citywide cleanup, saying things like, “It’s our personal responsibility” to clean up the city. In some respects I agree with the good pastor who said that, but we all pay taxes collectively so that we have services that we collectively receive and can’t manage to take care of on our own, you know, like educating the masses, building roads and infrastructure, or taking 100 FT tall trees off of our house with a giant tractor/loader.

Not only do we no longer have a say in how our taxes are being spent, we are no longer getting much in return for those high taxes.