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Sioux Falls

Planning Commission SF City Council Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls City Council Agenda, Sept 3-4, 2019

l3wis 7Comments

City Council Informational, 4 PM, Sept 3

A presentation from the planning department on a ‘Pedestrian Plan.’

City Council Regular Meeting, 7 PM, Sept 3

Item #6, Approval of Contracts. I find it interesting that the city is going to pay $300K for a school park? I have no idea what this plan is or if it is in coordination with the school district. Hopefully we will have more details at the meeting. It also looks like the money is JUST for ‘planning’ the site. We are also dumping another $45K into the indoor pool for something called ‘window fans’. I remember when they were designing the place, we were told they would take extra care in ensuring we would use durable materials and equipment to keep maintenance costs down. I find it interesting that after only a couple of years we are installing new equipment.

Item #35, 1st reading, Renewing franchise agreement with Midco.

Item #36-37, 1st Readings, Kirby downtown dog park and gifting agreement of $600K.

Planning Commission Meeting, 6 PM, Sept 4

Item #5B, Bob’s Chicken Casino. Planning department recommending denial due to neighborhood opposition.

Item #5C, Another casino on North Cliff, while some of the neighbors oppose, the Planning department recommends approval.

Item #5E, It’s a Pizza party! They want to build a pizzeria in a residential neighborhood by USF, they would serve beer. Some neighbors are opposed to alcohol in the neighborhood.

Item #5I, Looks like the Sanford Sports Complex is considering building a baseball stadium. First time I heard about this.

Open Meetings Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Parks and Rec

Sioux Falls Parks board August meeting minutes and video absent

l3wis 2Comments

I asked a city official yesterday why it takes over a week to post the minutes and video of the Parks Board meetings. We were promised more transparency of the meetings by recording not only audio but visual, yet it takes over a week to post it. What is even more troubling is that it takes that long to produce minutes from the meeting. Why?

Maybe the person in charge of the minutes is also in charge of the NO MOW list and they have conveniently lost them, until they conveniently found them. I suspect they will magically show up by the end of the day.

Sioux Falls

People are leaving because we are too conservative

l3wis 38Comments

I have known for a long time that many of my friends have not only left this state because of money and opportunities, but one of the main things I often hear is “The place is just too damn conservative for me.”

Increasingly, people are congregating themselves geographically and along educational lines, said Rachel Sheffield, a senior policy adviser for the committee. Highly educated people, who tend to hold more liberal viewpoints, are concentrating themselves in cities in California, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Texas, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C., she said. Conservatives, meanwhile, are tending to stay in more rural areas. The two groups are interacting less, Sheffield said, which is exacerbating political divisions.

“If you’re not interacting with people with different political viewpoints, then you are less likely to have a face to go with differing viewpoints; that could lead to seeing different political viewpoints as connected to this unrelatable group that you never talk to and it’s easier to demonize people you don’t actually know,” Sheffield said.

I actually think Sioux Falls was less conservative in the late 90’s. Just look at the utter failure of the SD Democratic Party. I think after Tom Daschle left the Senate and GW Bush came into office, we started driving way north on the redness, and of course, Trump has made things even worse.

Patrick Starr SF City Council SFFD SFPD Sioux Falls

Public Safety Facility needs to be a joint effort

l3wis 14Comments

This is a guest post by Sioux Falls City Councilor Pat Starr. I agree with Pat that we should NOT be paying for this entire project by ourselves. Our Fire and Police chiefs should be working with the finance department on how we can save money and build partnerships. I think ALL department directors should be looking at ways to be more fiscally responsible.

Emergency preparation and response are fundamental responsibilities of government. These are always at the top of the planning list when we discuss budgets and people.

Sioux Falls has a public safety need. It’s a big one. The projection is a $30 million dollar bond issue. The problem here is, it is planned to be a $30 million bond issue with the citizens of Sioux Falls on the hook for it.

The City needs to provide an adequate training facility for its Police and Fire Departments. The need is real. Current facilities are substandard and the departments have outgrown them.

Now, this is where the discussion begins. We know the need. The Sioux Falls Police and Fire departments have put forth a plan for addressing their needs.

Keep this in mind, their needs. The vision needs to be bigger. Sioux Falls is the regional leader in business and entertainment. We need to be the leader in public safety as well.

As we review plans for bonding and facilities, we must consider the needs of our region and include them.

Sioux Falls does not have our only emergency responders. We must consider how we can build a regional facility to train local, county, state and federal safety personnel. Look around the Sioux Falls area. If there is a major emergency in our area, don’t you want highly trained responders?

There are many hard working public servants in addition to Sioux Falls Police and Fire including:

1. Minnehaha and Lincoln County Sheriffs and Deputies

2. SD Highway Patrol

3. Game Fish and Parks Officers

4. SD Department of Criminal Investigation

5. SD Penitentiary Officers

6. FBI

7. US Federal Marshal Service

8. TSA – airport security

9. Homeland Security

10. Sioux Falls ambulance

11. Regional community ambulance crews

12. Regional partner fire departments

13. Regional partner community based law enforcement

14.    Civil Air Patrol

I am sure everyone can add to the list – but the bottom line is, all levels of public safety personnel need state of the art training to protect the citizens of Sioux Falls and the region.

This is not a vanity bonding project as so many of our recent bonding projects we have been in Sioux Falls. This is public safety.

Training all levels of our emergency responders does not stop at our city limits. We must have our responders knowing how to work with their regional partners. There must be regional cooperative agreements so all responders receive the training that keeps us safe.

The funding must come from all levels of government. The citizens of Sioux Falls cannot be the sole funding source for this extremely important regional project.

There must be a search for and securing of state and federal grants.

I encourage you to become involved. This plan will happen quickly and will be decided by the end of 2019.

$30 million is asking too much for the handful of the people of Sioux Falls, with promises to let other responders use. Simple statements don’t protect us. We need all regional agencies to be fully trained for them and for us. This project is too big for just Sioux Falls to own and control.

5G Mayor TenHaken Sioux Falls

Mayor TenHaken rolls out 5G

l3wis 3Comments

I should probably be careful about posting about 5G, I don’t want the sheriff’s department to tear down my door and arrest me.

At first glance I was actually surprised this took so long;

Mayor Paul TenHaken today signed the first set of “small cell installation” agreements. Verizon will install “small cell technology” on city light poles and in city parks. The cells will expand bandwidth in high-volume areas and help the city to facilitate 5G in the future. No word yet on when the cells will be installed. 5G is the fifth generation of mobile broadband. It’s about 20 times faster than the current 4G.

As you may or may not know, a lawsuit was settled between the major telecoms over the false advertising of 5GE;

  Sprint and AT&T on Monday reached a settlement — characterized by both as “amicable” — over a lawsuit in which Sprint claimed its rival carrier used “numerous deceptive tactics to mislead consumers” with its “5G E” branding. 

The contention was that 5GE really isn’t ‘5G’ it’s just an upgraded version of 4G. But that is between the telecoms anyone dumb enough to believe the technology. But my other concern I have (which I had from the beginning) is if the neighborhoods will get fair warning before the antennas are installed? I have felt it should be like any other zoning issue, utility, within 500 feet of your home, a letter of notice should be sent, and their should be a public hearing. As we already know, the technology is really kind of untested on the effects it will have not just on health but visibility. It seems our mayor and city council have become patsies for John Thune and the FEDS.

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