Sioux Falls

UPDATE II: Sioux Falls City Council Cell Phone Ban discussion went poorly

l3wis June 18, 2019 19Comments

UPDATE II: Belfrage talked about the subject, listen HERE.

UPDATE: Councilor Brekke sent me this quote last night after the meetings;

“In my not so humble opinion there is nothing more important than the structure we operate under, that is the legacy we leave behind. All other issues will come and go. If the structure is flawed, the decisions made and outcomes achieved will be flawed as well. If the process lacks integrity and is not respected, the decisions made will lack integrity and respect as well. I cannot imagine anything more harmful to our City Government than losing respect for the decision making process.”

The excuses came out, but Cameraman Bruce and I tried to dispel them during public input during today’s informational meeting.

Presentation DOC; Transparency_in_Communication_Ordinance.pdf

Councilor Kiley said that there was only ‘Speculation’ that these communications were going on. Both Bruce and I told them that we had text messaged at least 5 of the councilors and 3 have responded during meetings, so there was no ‘speculation’. I have also seen many people comment on my site and FB that they text councilors during the meetings.

Councilor Soehl felt that since there wasn’t a statue saying text communications during meetings were actually public input, he could not support it. Hey, McFly, that is whole purpose of the ordinance.

Neitzert didn’t say anything except laugh during my input. He did however make a snark about reading notes off his cell phone at the regular council meeting.

Erickson went ballistic about not knowing about this. First off, she did know about it, secondly, Brekke who is helping Stehly with the proposal told Erickson that this was just a proposal and discussion and they have put nothing on the agenda yet and were asking for input. Oh, and councilor Erickson admitted she does property management work during the council meetings and settles disputes between her kids. Funny, I thought Christine was married to her business partner and very capable father who could handle the ‘leaky sinks’ while she did the people’s work a couple of hours on Tuesday Nights. Maybe we should let Stehly give piano lessons during the meetings?

My only suggestion would be to only ban text messaging and emails, I don’t have a problem with internet access to look up laws, research, etc.

I have a feeling that if Stehly does get this on the agenda, it will go nowhere, because the bratty RS5 need to have their cell phones so they can be coached on votes during the meeting. The irony is if they don’t pass this simple ordinance, they have NO idea what will happen the next time they are caught texting at a meeting, because at some point they will be wishing they just went along with it.

Sioux Falls City Council Agenda, June 18, 2019

l3wis June 16, 2019 0Comments

Council Informational Meeting, 4 PM

May Financial Report

City Council cell phone ban proposal (Stehly). I see no harm in this. If the city council can limit public input and put a texting ban in place on it’s citizens, it’s time for the council to put their phones a way during meetings and pay attention to the business at hand.

Council Regular Meeting, 7 PM

Item #22, Bonus Round is adding a second location Downtown next to the Full Circle Book COOP.

Item #33, 2nd Reading, Item #34, 1st reading, Ordinance. This would remove the words ‘gun dealers’ from city ordinance so the city’s pawn shops can still collect serial numbers from guns, essentially skirting state law. Not sure what kind of testimony will occur, but what I find ironic is that while the city doesn’t challenge state law to ban guns in public buildings, like Carnegie where council meetings are, they want to make sure a national vendor like Leads Online can continue to collect data on guns. I guess we only challenge state law in SF when it affects expensive property being stolen or when large national vendors are being threatened with loss of revenue. Who cares about being safe at a public meeting?

Item #38-39, 1st Readings, Re-Zones for Tony Erickson (husband of councilor Christine Erickson) to convert properties from single family to townhomes to probably eventually make into Air BNB properties. We will see what the neighbors think. I expect Christine to recuse herself, though it really doesn’t matter. I wonder how many of the neighbors even know what they will do with the properties. It will be interesting to see if this is brought up during the hearings.

Calendar Coming, Click to Enlarge

Sioux Falls City Councilor Stehly’s cell phone ban proposal will have it’s naysayers

l3wis June 16, 2019 15Comments

The arguments against the ban by the RS5 will be high theatre, so let’s review some of the cards they will pull against this ban;

• What if there is an emergency I need to attend to? That’s simple, you give the number of the council’s operations manager, Jim David to your family members. If their is an emergency, they can call him and he can notify the councilor affected immediately. The irony is that in the 15 or so years I have been attending and watching council meetings, I have only witnessed a councilor leaving once due to an emergency.

• What if I need to research something. Well that research should have been done before you came to the meeting (just like they used to do in the olden days when they had NO internet and NO cell phones) and if you have legal or logistic questions you can ask the applicant or city director to answer those questions by walking to the microphone during the meeting.

• Having my cell phone during a meeting is part of a modern society. While I can somewhat agree that technology has changed, the meetings really are a ‘public’ hearing of sorts, that means all correspondence during the meetings between councilors and staff, constituents or applicants should be public, and in a legal sense, if you are texting about policy in the meeting, that really should be released to the public.

• We don’t need an ordinance, we can just learn to be more respectful. Funny, I said the same thing about public input, but that didn’t stop the RS5 from putting more restrictions on it. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If the citizens of Sioux Falls can’t be trusted to be more respectful with texting and driving how can we trust our elected leaders?

Let’s face it, they will come up with a whole host of different reasons we don’t need the ban, because they want to continue to text the ‘players’ in and out of the room. And that is really what it is about, as I said on FB about this last week;

What a sad world we live in that 9 adult elected leaders in our city can’t put their phones away for a couple of hours to do the people’s work. I grew up with landlines and didn’t get a cell phone until about 15 years ago. What did elected leaders do before cell phones and the internet?

These public meetings are about doing the people’s work, and they shouldn’t be distracted by outside testimony or influence during the meetings. If the important people want to be heard privately, schedule a appointment with them before the regular meeting. I don’t take issue with prior discussion with all the parties involved, but when it comes to the actual meeting, you need to be ready to go.

What this comes down to is a game the RS5 has been playing for awhile to gang up on certain councilors and it’s no different then watching sharks circle their prey. Guess what, you are big kids now, you can put away the video games and cartoon watching for a couple hours a week to do the people’s business. I know the first couple of meetings without your phones you will probably experience cold sweats, uncontrollable hand twitches and suddenly the need to wring your hands with hand sanitizer every 5 minutes, but you will survive.