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Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls

Should it be called the Sioux Empire ‘Republican’ Leadership Council?

l3wis 4Comments

I’m not sure how many of the people on this council are Republican, but I can count quite a few;

  • Jason Ball, president and CEO of the Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce, will serve a one-year term as Chair (?)
  • Andy Patterson, President, Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation (Vice Chair) (?)
  • Cindy Heiberger, Commissioner, Minnehaha County (REP)
  • Jim Schmidt, Commissioner, Lincoln County (REP)
  • Robin J. Houwman, Presiding Judge, Second Judicial Circuit, Unified Judicial System (?)
  • Mike Milstead, Sheriff, Minnehaha County (REP)
  • Steve Swenson, Sheriff, Lincoln County (REP)
  • Paul TenHaken, Mayor, City of Sioux Falls (REP)
  • TBD, School Board Member, Sioux Falls Public School District
  • David Flicek, Administration, Avera McKennan (?)
  • TBD, Administration, Sanford Health
  • TBD, Council member, Sioux Falls City Council
  • TBD, Community member

When I think of a ‘Leadership Council’ I think of people from all political stripes. It will be interesting to see who fills the open seats. I know of only ONE Democrat on the School Board (after Alberty leaves, and that is Kate Parker. On the city council it is only Pat Starr, who would make a great addition to the council). The reason this concerns me is that when such a large group of mostly Republican ‘leaders’ get together, it usually is about the bottom line first;

“Minnehaha County is excited to expand upon existing relationships in building a collaboration that will engage both public and private sectors,” Heiberger said.

I anticipate to see strong partnerships, but I also expect to see these ‘private’ partnerships watching out for their business interests first. I suspect them to sacrifice very little while the taxpayers pick up the tab.

The Council will begin regular, quarterly meetings this fall.

It will also be interesting to see if the council meets in public, or the forum they decide on to meet in public.  

 

Event Center Open Government Open Meetings Sioux Falls

Is the Events Center Campus Book Club skirting transparency?

l3wis 3Comments

The first two meetings were several hours long with Bruce’s camera present. A foot soldier attended the 3rd meeting yesterday, it was a whopping 25 minutes long. This person got the feeling that the group is now meeting in sub-committees privately to avoid being transparent in the bigger picture. It will be interesting to see their final decisions come out of nowhere with no prior discussion (at least one out in open).

It seems the more we scream for transparency, the more they go underground.

Elections SF School District Sioux Falls

UPDATE II: Sioux Falls School District vote count complicated

l3wis 23Comments

UPDATE II: The AL has a great story this morning about ‘top heavy’ administrative pay (the story should have been done before the election, but better late then never). You can take it the way you want to, but I love the goobly-guck the SFSD uses to justify the enormous pay gap between administrators and teachers. They say SF should pay administrators more because we are a bigger city. LOL. You also have MORE administrators. Over $9 million of this year’s budget goes toward administrative pay which hovers at around $100K average per administrator.

Click to enlarge

CORRECTION: I had originally posted that the votes were counted twice, that is not the case. I jumped to conclusions. A commenter pointed out that you have a possibility of TWO votes per ballot. I feel like a dumbass. But I still stand by what I wrote below. The undervotes are NOT being shown correctly. I also wonder what the odds are of the top two vote getters TYING?

Just look for yourself, according to the SFSD results page, 4,239 votes were counted and 4,247 were cast.

UPDATE: OKAY, this isn’t as bad as it looks, but it’s still questionable, once you figure out that each ballot ‘can’ contain TWO votes. But it also can contain just one or none.

But if you add up the vote count of the four candidates and undervotes you come to a grand total of; 8,478 votes. If if you divide it by 2 you get 4,239 ballots (actual number of ballots counted).

By these numbers they are saying that everyone voted for two candidates. While you certainly could vote for two, some people only vote for one. Where it gets even more complicated, if they seem to have counted the undervotes TWICE. In other words, they consider one blank ballot as TWO undervotes.

I’m even more confused now.

MORE TO COME.

SF City Council Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls City Council Elects ‘Non-Leaders’ to Leadership

l3wis 8Comments

Besides Councilor Stehly saying, “Wham, Bam, Thank You Maam” there was a lot of elitist eye-rolling and laughter going on when councilors Brekke and Stehly were making nominating speeches for their choice for Vice-Chair, Pat Starr. Of course, Neitzert got it, in a pre-determined vote, which gave them plenty of time to laugh at the nominating speeches since the fix was in.

I was watching from the comfort of my office at home, but from talking to citizens watching in the chambers, it was purely disgusting and disrespectful. It amazes me the level of disrespect the RS5 (Rubber Stamp 5) have for Pat and Theresa, especially after the entire city got to see how incredibly idiotic, careless, reckless, fiscally irresponsible and just plain stupid their votes were for the downtown parking ramp, in which none of them have apologized for, just said ‘oh well’ and blew it off. I also hear now that Mayor Selfie is looking for a competitor to Stehly.

Please forget about the mistakes of the past and elect me to leadership. Not only are they extremely arrogant and dysfunctional, they are in complete denial of their mistakes and stupidity. This is the worst city council I have seen in 15 years. Complete Losers and Failures. The ironic part was when Erickson and Neitzert were working with the minority, they were getting things done, but once the rules got changed for Air BNB and Erickson started rolling in the dough, she flipped, almost overnight. It may be time to implement a lodging tax on Air BNB.

Oh, but it gets better. At the city council informational meeting, the IT department (growing in employees with many of the other mayoral departments) requested to raise the tax for Midco and Vast from 2.5% to 6%. It took bringing up Midco’s attorney (thank you Theresa) to admit that that tax will just be passed onto the consumer and the communications companies won’t pay anything.

So our innovation manager’s greatest feat so far is a plan to tax us more for internet and cable. This is what a HS diploma will get you.

 

Elections SF School District Sioux Falls

Major FAIL on Political Mailer

l3wis 10Comments

As a person who has worked on political mailers for over a decade, certain things have to be right. The most important things are dates, typos and ‘PAID FOR’ designation.

I don’t even know where to start with Baker’s postcard. First off, I received this card TODAY, the day of the election. Not good. It appears she probably mailed this on Friday or Saturday, but with Presort STD, there are NO guarantees when something will show up in your mailbox. The PO guarantees 10-11 days for Presort STD. In SF, it’s between 2-3 days. She should have mailed this NO later than Wednesday or Thursday or went with 1st Class.

But here is the worst part, She only has 10 precincts listed and only 4 of them are correct, the other six in yellow don’t exist. Bad, very bad. How is it that someone running for the School Board doesn’t have enough sense to check the SFSD’s website for polling places?

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