I was a little disappointed today when I viewed the new bird mural, it is mostly hidden from full view due to the viaduct;
It is also clearly inspired by street artist genius Bansky. “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” – Pablo Picasso
This post was sent to me by Bread for the World Sioux Falls Chapter;
Transit survey:
Have you taken the online transit survey? SAM is developing a Transit Development Plan update and says this survey will help. Find it Here.
Public input meetings are next week. You might have thoughts about where routes should go, or how often, or other ideas. Four meeting options:
Monday, Aug.1, 10:00am
Monday, Aug.1, noon
Wednesday, Aug.3, 3:30pm
Wednesday, Aug.3, 5:30pm
They will be at the new City Center Building, 231 N Dakota Ave, Cooper Room. You can park across the street at the downtown library, where parking is now FREE.
They want local public participation, so please come.
Please choose one of these meetings and RSVP to BSchweitzer@siouxfalls.org .
Kids’ rides. Thanks for your support for getting more kids on the bus. If you haven’t weighed in with city council, there’s still time. They will on this at the council meeting next Tuesday, Aug.2, 6pm.
Email for City Council: gneitzert@siouxfalls.org, mselberg@siouxfalls.org,
csoehl@siouxfalls.org, pstarr@siouxfalls.org,
AlexJensen@siouxfalls.org, Rich.Merkouris@siouxfalls.org,
Sarah.Cole@siouxfalls.org, David.Barranco@siouxfalls.org,
Public transit is a critical part of a city that works for its people, as well as for a more sustainable environment. Thanks for your interest in improving our public transit system.
UPDATE: Instead of expensive quiet zones with concrete barriers and crossbars, maybe the city could work with current city ordinances and the state RR board to create ‘quiet times’. In other words limit the time of day trains could pass over city roads and thru neighborhoods. Let’s admit it, when a train is NOT moving over traffic they are quiet. So why not find a way to limit train traffic thru the city? My suggestion would be to have these as active times;
8:30 AM-11 AM, 1 PM-4 PM and 6 PM-9 PM
This would give the Railroads 8.5 hours in the day to move thru the city. I have never understood why the trains need to run at 3 AM or during morning and evening rush hour, it is ridiculous. I think the state and the city could implement local laws that would limit train traffic and keep the whistles to a minimum.
The railroad has had its reign on us long enough, and if they don’t like the designated times, they can certainly do what we have wanted for decades, move the damn trains on the outskirts of town and stop running them thru our city.
While I certainly support quiet zones on 6th & 8th streets, it is pretty obvious it is for the wealthy condo dwellers;
The City of Sioux Falls is looking at setting up quiet zones along Weber Avenue, at the Sixth Street and Eighth Street intersections of downtown. The plan is to make improvements to the railroad crossings so train engineers won’t have to blow their whistles as often, if at all.
If they are successful setting up the quiet zones, they really need to them also at Cliff between 12th and 14th (most of the DT train traffic comes thru here all thru the early morning and day) and across 14th by the credit union.
While I am supportive of this, it seems like they want to set them up where expensive condos are being built and NOT where they are really needed. But it seems the RR is NOT to keen on the idea;
But a spokesperson with the railroad industry urged the state railroad board to proceed with caution about quiet zones, saying that blowing a train whistle is always safer than not blowing one, especially when drivers aren’t paying attention.
I have a feeling there will be a fight about this, and the railroads rarely lose, just look how this project was negotiated, the railroads got millions of dollars to move but didn’t move at all, in fact traffic has increased DTSF and they now stage the cars right by the steel company and Avera.
I have argued for a long time the DT RR relocation project was poorly negotiated and when it comes to frequent train traffic, nothing was solved.
When Mayor Dave Munson and Senator Tim Johnson first proposed the idea, it was to remove the train traffic from DTSF, or make it very minimal. We got duped.
The horns are a tootin’ and the noisy makers are out;
Sioux Falls set a record by surpassing $1 billion in building activity last year, setting the mark in late November. This year, the city hit $1 billion in less than seven months.
I have argued for years that I while this is a good thing, we really need a realistic breakdown.
I would first start with a simple breakdown;
• 100% Private investment vs. Institutional & Public
I couldn’t even guess what that would be, but I think private is probably the bigger percentage
I would also like to see this breakdown;
• Density vs. New development
In other words what percentage is building and rebuilding in our core and established neighborhoods and what is new land acquisition?
A more detailed breakdown would be;
• Public (city, state, county, school, federal, military, etc.)
• Institutional (Hospitals, non-profits, churches, etc.)
• Multi-Housing (Apartments, duplexes, etc.)
• Single family residential
• Commercial (100% private investment)
• Commercial (partial public investment like tax rebates and TIFs)
I think this data is important because it gives us a big picture of how we are breaking these records. I have asked for this data for years and never get anywhere. I did download the building permit spreadsheet from 2021 and tried to break it down but it was nearly impossible since many developers have multiple mysterious LLCs they are using for the permitting.
If the Planning Department wants to really boast about the permits, why not give us a picture of what that looks like.
You know that old saying, ‘Follow the Money’. It was true when it was originally stated and still true today. If a candidate or ballot initiative is worthy of voters support they should be transparent about who is funding the campaigns.
Just look at the little trick the Mayor pulled giving $17,500 to a non-incumbent candidate thru his PAC and cleverly hiding it from the voters by giving the money AFTER the final reporting period before the election. But, Hey, I have never accused PTH of being transparent.
Fast forward to the folks trying to stop Wholestone (they will fail). They say they won’t release the names though many have speculated it involves a certain business mogul who owns gobs of housing development land around the proposed packing plant. They can only run for so long since the finance report is due in September.
Why not get a head of the hubbub and just tell people now who is funding the campaign? Oh that’s right, because it has partisan Republican hacks running the campaign and funding it. Robert Peterson who is the son and basement dweller of Bill and Sue Peterson (former and current legislators) is running a childish and non-transparent campaign. While telling voters and petition signers this is about the stench of a packing plant it is really about land investment. I have said all along of Peterson and his cabal of campaign investors were really concerned about the smell of dead hogs they would have written a petition that bans ALL large scale packing plants in Sioux Falls which would send the Chinese Communists running the S-Hole plant downtown literally packing and would have also stopped WF from building or expanding.
There has all been a lot of crying from the campaign that the city council and mayor are not helping them. Let me clue you in as to why. If the city government would make even the smallest attempt to stop WF, they would get their asses sued (in other words the taxpayers would get sued). The land is already owned by WF and zoned properly according to Shape Places. The city has no options in stopping it.
There is also another factor the campaign won’t tell us about, immigrant workforce. WF has already said they will likely build housing for an immigrant workforce adjacent to the packing plant.
One thing I have learned from being a part of a petition that was thrown out by the city is that you should always have the lawyers look at your petition before you move forward and make sure it is rock solid. I saw issues with this before they even collected one signature.
Like I said, it will likely pass over 75%, but it won’t really matter, because they found a loophole and all the crying in the world won’t stop it now.
l3wis