South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

Sioux Falls

Paratransit SF City Council Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Transit Transportation

UPDATE: St. Cloud, MN bails on their On Demand Transit system (H/T-GFG)

l3wis 3Comments

UPDATE: A South DaCola foot soldier sent me this information about a story he read in the St. Cloud local paper;

One of the highlights I picked up in a quick scan – the original fixed route service which was replaced had a ridership of 5 riders per hour.  At the conclusion of the trial period (in late Dec 2019?), ridership for the On Demand version was 1/2 of the previous – 2.5 riders per hour.

Nonetheless, at that time, they continued the trial period in order to see if a different period of the calendar would yield different results.

Didn’t read/scan beyond that, but would surmise that they continued the trial, COVID-19 emerged (which wasn’t kind to public transportation of any type) and they finally decided, post COVID-19, that the On Demand model wasn’t working.

St. Cloud’s ON Demand system has been a pilot since 2019 (similar to Sioux Falls) and they decided to end it;

A temporary bus service in Sartell is coming to an end and a fixed route will replace the shared-ride service.

Metro Bus is sunsetting the ConneX on-demand service and resuming Fixed Route 32 starting on Sunday.

The pilot project was started in 2019 and extended several times before the decision was made to go back to the fixed route system for Sartell.

I tried to find some articles why they decided to ‘sunset’ the program but couldn’t really find anything (links are welcome in the comment section). My educated guess is that On Demand Transit doesn’t work well, isn’t efficient and leaves a lot of riders out of the equation.

The Sioux Falls City Council really needs to strap in and take a very active role in fixing our transit system in Sioux Falls. First call I would make as a councilor is to a city official with St. Cloud.

Elections SF School District Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls School Board Candidate Forum Tonight

l3wis 7Comments

(An interesting moment in the video is when candidate Johnson didn’t know how to answer a question about the separation of church and state.)

The Greater Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce will host a School Board Candidate Forum on Thursday, May 4 from 6:30-7:30 p.m. at the school district’s Instructional Planning Center. This forum will feature Dawn Marie Johnson and Brian Mattson who are the two candidates actively running for one open seat on the Sioux Falls School Board.

The forum will be moderated by the League of Women Voters. Candidates will answer questions on their goals if they are elected.

This forum is free and open to the public. It will also be livestreamed on the Sioux Falls School District YouTube channel and KLRN TV- Midco cable channels 20 and 595.

(I voted yesterday early at the IPC. The person attending the voting told me they are getting 30-40 early voters per day. They are hand counting the vote, so I am sure whoever wins it will be by at least 80-90% of the vote 🙂

Censorship Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council Sioux Falls

UPDATE: Public inputers CENSORED at Sioux Falls City Council Meeting

l3wis 9Comments

Besides the lack of open government and transparency the authoritarians running this city went full dictator tonight and shut off the audio of two public inputers (fast forward to the Lucky Lady Casino public input. During Sierra’s testimony, Pettigrew Neighborhood Association president, the last minute was shut off and the first minute of the next inputer. This wasn’t just shutting off the public input microphone, but the entire room was silent.

I’m not a videographer, but it was pretty obvious this was probably done intentionally and NOT a technical glitch.

UPDATE: The latest from the city is that someone ‘accidentally’ hit the button. I guess my question is who ‘accidentally’ turned the button back on 🙂

I noticed a few weeks ago that when David Z was giving one of his usual public inputs with his printed out slides that they did not show the slides in the video. Maybe that was a dry run?

This isn’t just an open meetings violation, BUT a clear violation of the 1st Amendment. Unless an inputer is cussing like a sailor or threatening elected officials, they have the right to say whatever they want to. The public doesn’t have to follow the decorum rules, even though they should, those rules are for those on the dais.

When local governments start censoring their citizens at public meetings we have serious issues with who is governing us.

UPDATE: MAYOR TENHAKEN ADMONISHES LEGACY DEVELOPMENT

During the debate over the casino issues last night Paul admonished Legacy Development for NOT selling the troubled property to the city three years ago when he met with them privately to buy the property.

I was told about the meeting three years ago, and from talking to a couple of different sources it seemed believable. I told a couple of different reporters with NO followup. I guess if you want to get the news around here you have to wait 3 years for the mayor to tell us about it.

My concern wasn’t the failed deal, my concern than and now is that the city should get out of the land speculation business and he shouldn’t be cutting real estate deals behind closed doors without the council being at the table.

The irony of this is that the city has plenty of ordinances and regulations on the books to take care of this property, they just have to stop deferring and start acting. Last night’s decision was easy. Apply the laws you currently have on the books to stop the short term problems and create a long term solution to the neighborhood problems.

YOU CAN DO BOTH AT THE SAME TIME!

I think one of the reasons the state isn’t building their one-stop facility DTSF is because they want to move those kind of services away from downtown.

Picture below was taken right after the city council meeting last night.

Charter Revision Commission Elections Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Charter Revision Commission

Kirby suggests we eliminate the mayor as a councilor

l3wis 11Comments

I support this, but I am not sure the Charter Revision Commission will be on board;

I have some suggestions for improving the structure of our city government in advance of the 2026 election. My main recommendation is that the Charter Revision Commission give voters the opportunity to improve the mayor’s job description before the new person gets the job. A more traditional separation of powers in city government could help avoid some of the problems the city has experienced. The mayor would no longer serve on the city council.

The city’s chief executive job is more than enough for one person. I envision a structure like that used in state and federal government where the chief executive is separate from the legislature. This change would empower the council to take a stronger role in setting policy, as we originally intended thirty years ago when we put this form of city government in place.

As I said, the heaviest lift will be getting the CRC to put this on the ballot, especially with an election that will have a laundry list of mayoral and council candidates. He is absolutely correct that this needs to be done to even out the powers between the council and mayor’s office.

I think the secondary hurdle will be getting voters to support it. I’m sure there will be opposition, but I am NOT sure how the voters will take it or understand it. Opinions change quickly though, just look at the slaughterhouse vote.

Not only do I encourage voters to support this on the ballot box BUT to get involved before that and encourage the CRC to put this on the ballot.

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