South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

Sioux Falls

Art SF City Council Sioux Falls Zoo

UPDATE: Sioux Falls City Council Consent Agenda includes expenditures for the Zoo and Indian Mound retaining wall

l3wis 4Comments

Sometimes you have to peruse the city council’s consent agenda a few times before you catch stuff (Item #6).

Sub-Item #14, Great Plains Zoo Master Plan; Agreement for professional services, CLR Design, $80K (as pointed out to me, non-profit’s subsidized by the city usually pay for their own master plans, at least the Washington Pavilion Management Company has in the past for theirs. What is even more troubling about asking city coffers to pay for this is the new the partnership the Zoo has with the Butterfly house. Is the city gearing up to becoming a bigger owner in the Zoo’s capital? I’m all for long range masterplans, but instead of a study on penguins and butterflies maybe the city council needs to have a masterplan for the long term growth of the city.)

Sub-Item #22, Indian Mound Retaining Wall Rehabilitation – Bank Stabilization – Evaluation and Preliminary Design; Agreement for professional services, Infrastructure Design Group, Inc., $52K

UPDATE: This is a different retaining wall closer to the bike trail by the Country Club.

Art Mayor TenHaken SF City Council Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls City Hall still pushing for a Full-Time Arts coordinator

l3wis 8Comments

At the informational meeting this Tuesday the mayor’s office is still pushing for this position after the council has already denied the position last year;

A. Arts Task Force Update on Arts Coordinator Position by Jeff Eckhoff, Director of Planning and Development Services; and, Janet Brown, Arts Task Force

If you read the attached documents you will see the position would work with the VAC (Visual Arts Commission).

After watching the Bunker Ramp mural debacle, I am even more confident that this position would give the administration the upper hand in making final public art decisions and as a position in the Mayor’s office they would do the bidding of the mayor making the VAC almost obsolete.

While I agree with most of what is being said when it comes to public art coordination I believe it takes an effort from multiple non-profits, artists and other stakeholders. An actual public art commission or committee would make more sense helping guide these organizations.

I’m not sure the council has changed their mind on the position, but with this renewed vigor, even after the failure of the mural, it makes you wonder what kind of deal is being cut with council leadership (Council Chair Soehl was the biggest opponent when first introduced).

I’m sure an argument will be made that the failure of the mural process is a reason we need a person making these decisions.

The mural didn’t fail because of the process, in fact I fully commend the artists, VAC and the SFAC for their due diligence and incredible work they did to bring forth a candidate. It was their first go around at doing this, and they checked all the boxes. The mural ultimately failed because ONE person was offended and that is NO way to institute public art.

Mayor TenHaken Public Utilities Public Works Sioux Falls

Is the city data mining with the FREE dump pass?

l3wis 10Comments

The city has already been using a private contractor at the recycling center that uses the special software to scan your driver’s license and they will deny you if you abuse the dropoff;

The Sioux Falls Regional Sanitary Landfill now will scan driver’s licenses or state ID instead of collecting the free passes. It’s still one load per household address and up to 10,000 pounds. The goal is to start the digital approach April 3 and allow residents to use the pass until the end of the year.

While I agree mailing out postcards can be costly and apartment dwellers deserve the passes as well, I think they are making this more complicated then it needs to be. You simply keep a data base of all adult residents residing in Sioux Falls with their address and when they present their ID (not scanned) at the dump, their name is searched and removed from the list after utilizing the opportunity. This could be done in under a minute by simply doing a search of the name in the data base.

Many residents have reached out to me telling me they don’t want there DL scanned and this may be an attempt to data mine more information from citizens.

While this kind of information gathering is allowed by law where it gets grey is if this information can be shared with private political campaigns or candidates. As I understand it, it can be. Mayor TenHaken learned thru his Bloomberg connections how to data mine on citizens, but what is stopping him from using this data personally to run for higher office?

The rumor mill says that Marion Mike Rounds will likely run for governor leaving a Senate seat and Congressional seat open. Dusty Johnson will likely run for Senate (with maybe a primary challenge from Noem) and TenHaken is gearing up to run for Congress (you know, the guy who hates politics and isn’t a politician 🙂

Employment SF City Council Sioux Falls

City Employees getting a raise

l3wis 2Comments

I was glad to see that most city union employees are getting a raise (Resolutions 41-44).

While the police, fire and regular staff are getting a 6.5% COLA, council employees are getting 3.5%.

This really could have been negotiated last Fall when the administration knew there was high inflation. Instead they screwed around with a bonus before the election and now this first quarter raise.

Like I said, it is good to see this is happening as our city employees are taxpayer assets that need to be taken care of, I just don’t understand the piece meal approach.

Air BNB County Commission Minnehaha County Sioux Falls

Should Air BnB (short term rentals) be regulated in Sioux Falls?

l3wis 10Comments

The short answer is YES, but it is complicated. I’m all for regulating this industry but we should probably only do some small changes instead of broad sweeping changes that will hurt the industry.

One thing to remember is that most of the people who manage and own short term rentals in Sioux Falls are local owners who use local contractors and local goods and services. In other words any capital made from these rentals is circulated back into the local economy unlike a franchised hotel.

Minnehaha county has dialed back a bit on their recommended regulations;

Regulations for these short-term rentals would include:

  • A maximum occupancy of no more than three people per bedroom,
  • Requiring a minimum of one off-street parking space per guest bedroom,
  • The properties must be registered with the state as a vacation home,
  • And contact info for the owner/manager of the rental must be both submitted to the county planning department and displayed within the home.

I think two off-street parking spots is plenty. But instead of regulating how many people can stay in a room or how many cars can park there there should be regulations when it comes to registration of the property (state, city and county). There should also be quarterly health inspections, a small registration fee and a BID tax.

The city has just been mulling the idea, but there is talk they want to remove short term rentals from residential neighborhoods. First the obvious, if these are NOT in residential neighborhoods, where would they be? This of course would be an attempt to eliminate the short term rental business in Sioux Falls to delight of the hotel industry.

Short term rentals already have to follow the same ordinances as a homeowner or a long term rental so any other regulations would be above and beyond. But since this is a hospitality industry operating in Sioux Falls there should be a BID tax applied. All the other regulations are simply mushy-mash busy work bureaucrats cooked up.

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