South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

Snowgates

Mayor TenHaken SF City Council Sioux Falls snow removal Snowgates

UPDATE II: Where were the F’ing sanders today?!

l3wis 6Comments

UPDATE II: I guess the street fleet was out at 7:30 AM on Wednesday, FILLING POTHOLES! The only spots they sanded were bridges and after they left at 3:30 PM they were CALLED back at 4:30 PM to sand, and only a handful of drivers responded to the request. But hey, if you drive a public works truck in the parade of lights you are getting $60 bones an hour. Priorities folks. Priorities. I also heard and still trying to verify there was almost 90 traffic accidents on Wednesday. Surprising? NOT.

UPDATE: I was told the sanders were out at 7:30 AM on Wednesday. I would be curious how many because when I drove to work at 4 PM on Cliff Avenue, parts of 41st street and Minnesota were pure ice and packed snow and I didn’t see one single sander out.

I know I have complained about this before, but today was literally a Sh!t show. With the weather today being what is was I decided to drive my car. Bad decision. While I do have studded snow tires on my bike, I try to avoid riding in the dark when conditions are very icy, but I would have probably been safer on my bike. Normally it takes me about 20 minutes to commute to work (5 miles) it took me 30 minutes today in my car, not just because of the terrible condition of the streets but because multiple streets were closed due to accidents.

I get it, there really wasn’t a forecast for this event, but it shouldn’t matter, it is the END OF NOVEMBER! Those sanders should be ready at ALL TIMES!

I did see them out tonight at 9 PM. Thanks . . . dumbasses.

So besides the personal expenditures of folks vehicles being damaged, we have the police and fire respond to these incidents. And now we are paying NIGHT differential to sand the streets. The pennies the city may have saved by not sanding this morning when the event started doesn’t even come close to the amount being spent on responding to these accidents.

Is our Mayor that stupid?

Maybe so, but it also falls back on his lack of leadership. Dave Munson would have been on the horn to Galen Huber at 6 am sending out those sanders. Why? Because public safety should never have a price tag, it is a requirement of municipal government to provide these services thru the taxes we pay. Makes you wonder if the city is in such dire straights that they can’t even send sanders out? We have around $80 million in reserves. We could sand every road in the state for a year and still not spend it all.

I suggested to a councilor that the council write an ordinance that takes control of street plowing and sanding. Basically it would require the street department to act on their own when there is an event and craft the ordinance in a way that pretty much requires them to act immediately to any winter weather event and take that control away from the mayor.

Public Utilities Public Works Sioux Falls snow removal Snowgates

Is the City of Sioux Falls violating ordinance when plowing streets?

l3wis 22Comments

It doesn’t fail, when you run a city blog as long as I have, whenever it snows I hear about the removal. I have come to the realization that most people are being nit-picky, but the latest blowback is concerning.

SNOWGATES. By ordinance the city has to use them, unless they decide not to. I know, seems like a pretty big out. During and before the petition drive, Staggers and especially Stehly did extensive research on them, and unless the snow is super wet they work well up to almost 20 inches. The city continues to use a mulligan on them, but they could have been easily used the last two times, which brings us to another problem;

CLEARING INTERSECTIONS. One of the benefits of having snowgates is clearing intersections when the north/south and east/west streets are cleared, instead of creating a massive windrow they can be alleviated immediately.

But one of the glaring problems is this;

Looks like the city is supposed to be clearing snow curb to curb.

I have also heard the city has scaled back on private contractor use. I am not opposed to that, and would rather see city union employees getting the OT instead of a private contractor, but you wonder why this relationship has changed?

Isn’t life so wonderful that the only thing we have to bitch about with local government is how they take the white crap away?

I have often looked at things like public transit and snow removal as basic economic development. When people can safely get to work and make wages that’s a good thing. You kind of wonder how many folks were either terminated or reprimanded during this past storm because they couldn’t make it to work?

Local government is easy. Collect taxes, provide essential services.

Separation of Church and State Snowgates State Funding State Legislature Sue Peterson

Jesus Snowplows invade the South Dakota State Capital, sorta

l3wis 7Comments

When I started reading this article, it reminded me of the Jesus Snowplows in Sioux Falls (there are 2 this year).

That’s because several chairs in the committee room where the votes took place were adorned with holy crosses ahead of the meeting.

And now, the well-intended gesture by Sioux Falls Rep. Sue Peterson and others is drawing the attention of the South Dakota Legislature’s Executive Board, which will consider if action is necessary should the oil substance used to make the markings be unable to be removed.

When are these politicians going to figure out they can’t use taxpayer funded property as if it were their church? But there are other issues besides separation of church and state;

“We were simply praying and blessing the room in which leadership elections were going to be held,” she added (Sue Peterson). “It appears that someone is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill and shame me for my Christian faith.”

Even if you ignore Sue’s little Jesus moment, she also may have damaged taxpayer property, and she could be charged with a crime.

There is nothing wrong with a legislator having faith in a religion, there is also nothing wrong with them praying before a meeting, I actually support an invocation (invented by Ben Franklin, a deist). I wouldn’t even of cared if she passed out New Testaments at the meeting, BUT, you cannot defile or decorate taxpayer owned property with religious symbolism (or any symbolism) BECAUSE WE OWN IT!

I think a fitting punishment would be making Sue lick the crosses off the chairs. Maybe she could bring her son Robert who has been actively licking his wounds after the slaughterhouse ordinance failed.

Public Works Sioux Falls snow removal Snowgates

What did you think of the city’s response to the last snow storm?

l3wis 14Comments

Looks like Mayor Stoneless thinks we did a Heckuva job;

I will first defend Public Works and say that many things are out of their control. We often get early Spring heavy snowstorms, this is nothing new and they cause a ton of issues. Also, when it comes to snowgates, I think they tried to use them at first but with heavy snow they often break sheer pins and cause maintenance issues, so that argument is also moot.

What I find interesting is the response time. The two previous administrations tried to get the city plowed very quickly. I have heard behind the scenes that is not the goal of the current Plowing Czar and Mayor. In fact my street wasn’t plowed until after NOON on Tuesday, and it was pretty pointless because most of it had already melted by then.

I will still maintain that this administration is trying to get away with spending less money on snow removal each year. But $94 million dollar tax rebates to egg roll factories from Korea? Money well spent!

Mayor TenHaken Public Works Sioux Falls snow removal Snowgates

I warned about lack of plowing on residential streets

l3wis 6Comments

Well, if you think the residential streets are bad tonight, wait until the mess 24 hours from now.

I have been gradually seeing the past 3 years how the public works/street department in some weird effort to save money, has been neglecting to plow residential streets claiming ‘mother nature’ will do the job for them.

Sorry, that’s not the case in late December McFly.

Last Wednesday we had a blizzard that left about 3-4 inches and massive drifts on residential streets, none of it was plowed or removed. Yesterday we had another 2-3 inches added on top of that with little to no snow melt. The residential street I live on has well over 4 inches of half sloppy have compacted snow with several drift piles.

Oh, but it gets better, we are getting another 4-6 inches or more tomorrow on top of what is already making residential streets dangerous.

The main roads and emergency snow routes have been clean for a long time. Couldn’t the street department at least hit the troubled residential streets before we get hit in the morning?

I will remind people the main reason we pay taxes is for essential services, fire, police, street maintenance, you get the picture, unfortunately city hall thinks we need to save money on these things while we bail out non-profit private movie theaters, pay the salaries of management for closed entertainment facilities and give massive tax rebates to developers.

I’m still surprised I didn’t see volunteer church groups out scooping side streets yesterday. Don’t laugh, we are getting to that point with Prophet Stoneless running this city.

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