Category Archives: Theresa Stehly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhMw7mOZgSc

She is wondering if it is OK for city councilors to circulate petitions. The ethics commission will give their opinion tomorrow at 3:30 PM. The meeting will be at city hall in the old commission chambers. While I support councilors wanting to circulate petitions, I have encouraged Stehly to try first to work with her peers on the council to get legislation passed and if that fails than do a petition drive. I know she has run into walls with council in the past, but I have argued that mainly had to do with the rubber stamp leadership of council and doing whatever the mayor told them to do. I think her opportunity to get legislation passed on the council is much greater now with the new mayor and council than what it has been in the past two years.

UPDATE: Stormland-TV is speculating that Big T is going to try to have a petition drive to change our form of government. Maybe. Doesn’t really matter, she should have the right to have any petition drive she wants to. I do know that her and I have talked for years about changing Project TRIM and having the city trim their own trees in the boulevard (if the citizen is unable to). With the Ash Bore crisis coming upon us, right now would be the time to get the city to take care of those trees. I do know, like snow gates, it may be hard for Theresa to get that past the council, even though Brekke does support it. We will see. Stehly hasn’t shared with me what her intentions are, but it would be interesting to watch a sitting city councilor lead a petition drive to change our form of government. Things could get very, very, very ugly.

There has been an effort for awhile to change our strong mayor form of government. I have often said that it works, if it is worked right. Under Former Mayor Naming Tennis Centers after himself, he decided that he was the executive and legislative branch and pushed everything through that way. That is NOT how it was supposed to work.

I can understand the frustration Stehly has had over the past two years, with a dictator in that office consistently ignoring her or threatening ethics violations, and a leadership team that worked in lock step with his every desire.

I have often felt that this form of government can work, but it requires our city council to start collaborating and flexing their muscles and actually writing legislation and policies instead of the mayor’s office. They should also be a part of the budgeting process. I think moving forward they can do this and need to be firm with the new administration about it.

Instead telling citizens they have to do a petition drive to fix their government, maybe our government should fix it from within and start setting policies to make it better. I think this is the perfect opportunity for our council to implement those changes without us constantly having to do petition drives to fix policies because what we are really doing is correcting the MISTAKES our poorly chosen elected officials make. We elect you to make our government work better. Do your job.

So you would think after the first meeting of our new mayor my barbs would be flying towards Paul. Nope. He did a fine job, even reading a proclamation to a non-existent recipient. And how could he go wrong with a bouquet of flowers in front of him from Stehly’s garden?

In the appointment category, the council did move forward by nominating and electing councilor Brekke to the operations committee. Brekke’s first course of business should be opening the meetings to the public.

The big disappointment of the night? The council towing the old way of doing things and electing Selberg (rubber stamper) to the vice-chair position. Selberg has done nothing for two years except warm a chair, and that is what they wanted, a yes man. While I will try to stay optimistic, I’m afraid this move was a way to keep things just the way they are, leadership embargoing information from ‘certain’ councilors, the public and the media.

They know if Starr would have had that position he would have actually embraced open government and shared leadership information with the rest of the council, the public and media. Oh we can’t have that, can we.

Status quo right on day one. You should be so proud of yourself Councilor Neitzert. We wouldn’t want to overturn the apple cart.

  

This is a guest post by Sioux Falls City Councilor, Theresa Stehly;

Now that we have voted for two new City Council members, there is one more election happening at the next May 15 City Council meeting. This is the election of the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Council. These positions are very important for the public, because these people have the ability to empower or thwart the Council’s representation for the citizens. They have historically received inside information that all City Council members are not privy too. As a City Council member, I feel that this practice does not serve our citizens well and hinders transparency.

Here are the top 10 questions that need to be addressed from potential candidates:

1. What are your plans to get all the council members and the public information in a timely manner?
2. How will you communicate this written information with the council and the public?
3. How do you plan to bring more transparency into the process?
4. How will you empower the council to better serve the public?
5. How will you handle committee assignments and the appointments of committee chairs? Will you be willing to step down from a committee chair if elected to the leadership position and allow someone else the opportunity to chair a committee?
6. How will you handle requests from Council members to get an issue on the agenda?
7. What is your commitment to defending our rights as Council members to speak to the media, the department heads and the public?
8. What is your commitment to responding to the public and preserving public input?
9. What is your commitment to treating each Council member and the public with respect and defending their right to speak at Council meetings?
10. How do you plan to heal the fractured relationship within the City Council?

I invite the public to tune into the City Council meetings on CityLink channel 16 at 7:00 PM on Tuesdays. Informational meetings are held at 4:00 PM on Tuesdays also.  View the meetings at Siouxfalls.org. I am hoping for a new era of respect, transparency and citizen representation in our government.

Theresa Stehly

At Large City Council Member