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Sioux Falls Mayor TenHaken; ‘I am going to close the Dudley House, because I will end homelessness in Sioux Falls.’ How’s that working out for yah?

l3wis August 6, 2024 11Comments

It was quite possibly the most ludicrous campaign comment I have heard in a long time. When Poops was running for his first term he did a Q & A with other candidates at Democratic Forum and when asked what he would do about the Dudley House, he made the above comment.

It is obviously not working out for him.

Also, a rumor that has gotten a lot of traction is that Oklahoma sent a couple busloads of Native American homeless folks to South Dakota because ‘we have more resources’ for Natives. What happened next was a massive brawl between Lakota tribal members and natives from Oklahoma.

How does this happen? Lack of leadership, that we will get to in a moment.

If you talk to downtown business owners they will tell you, it is killing business. I was riding Friday and Saturday night downtown (First Friday) and it was pretty mediocre for crowds. Normally First Fridays downtown in the summer are packed.

So we are talking about homelessness Downtown Sioux Falls and the mayor said he was ‘over it’. That is great leadership. NOT!

But in this article, obviously written by Poops’ media staff, he contradicts his feelings on the homeless, just look at these obvious competing quotes;

“Quite honestly, I’m over it,” TenHaken said.

“I’m very passionate about this issue right now,” TenHaken said.

So you don’t care but you are passionate? Huh? You are so full of it, it oozes from your ears and your staff can’t even scoop the bullsh!t away.

We have a homeless issue downtown, isn’t that obvious? Yet our part-time mayor just throws his hands in the air and says let someone else handle it. He should have been on the phone with our DC delegation to have them send a very curt message to the Oklahoma delegation, “The next time a bus shows up from your state, we are going to refuel it, order takeout for the passengers and send them back.”

That’s leadership, not just doing jumping jacks at a middle school.

This of course is no surprise, our city government is so dysfunctional now I even have folks who don’t follow city politics tell me it’s bad. And the city is not willing to spend any money on the issue, just look how they dropped the ball completely on child care, giving a contract to a private law firm to identify the problem. Are you F’ing blind! Apparently so.

I am also extremely annoyed that pigeon605 thought it was okay to show pictures of transients faces. Awful! They deserve privacy just like the rest of us and I am extremely disappointed in them allowing these pics to be posted (notice the police officer pictures you don’t see their faces).

Allowing EXTRA Public Input for Developers setting a BAD precedent

l3wis August 5, 2024 0Comments

While I think MOST of the council is against this, it will be interesting to hear the council discuss this item (#79) the italics are the changes;

30.015 ADDRESSING THE COUNCIL; TIME LIMIT.
(a) Public input shall be allowed for any item on the regular agenda. Each person addressing the city council shall step up to the microphone in front of the rail, shall give his or her name in an audible tone of voice for the record, and unless further time is granted by the presiding officer, shall be limited to three minutes on any ordinance receiving a first reading; and on the date of final adoption by the city council, five minutes shall be allowed. If the regular agenda item is quasi-judicial as defined by state law or a zoning ordinance, the private applicant shall be invited first to provide public input and allowed an additional three minutes for rebuttal following public input. Rebuttal by the applicant shall only be allowed to respond to earlier testimony provided during public input. The city council has the right to overrule the presiding officer’s use of discretion pursuant to Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised (latest edition).

I am against this because there is also a process in place with Robert’s Rules that allows the chair of the meeting to call up an applicant or ANY inputer to the podium for additional testimony. I not even opposed to that applicant physically raising their hand to talk more so they can be recognized by the chair. But giving more time to the proponents is unfair to the process. Leave it as is. If you need more information, call them up. This is NOT broken.

I guess ONE applicant complained. We don’t need to be changing public input because one whiny person complained. I know who it WAS, and they WERE NOT a developer just a business owner trying to destroy a residential neighborhood around his office.

Busy Summer!

l3wis July 30, 2024 2Comments

Wish I was blogging more, but I have to be honest, the weather has been incredible and I have been riding like a madman! A friend called me the other day and asked what my total mileage on my bike was and I found it on the computer. This is 3.5 years of riding, all year long! I will admit, about 30% of that is total assist, so I don’t want to sound like Lance Armstrong.

And while I haven’t been putting pen to paper I have been researching and tracking down some interesting stories, here is a brief;

• A big rumor about a city hall coverup is about to poke it’s head, or at least the tip.

• Some peeps are privately pursuing former city councilor Marshall Selberg for ethics violations and him living out of his district.

• The school district is scrambling to try to figure out how to squash their mishandling of perjured election forms.

• I am pretty sure most if not ALL of the city councilors knew Matthew Paulson was investing in the Dakota Scout. More on that later.

• Got word today that MP, that we just mentioned above, got a fat grant from the state to educate immigrant refugees in, in-home daycare. Problem is, no loans were given out to actually start the businesses that are so desperately needed.

• Lastly, and this is a biggin’ (that’s an old blues term) I had a wonderful 3 hour convo with a city councilor this past weekend. We had never chatted over malt beverages before so it was nice. We talked about a lot of reform, and it was refreshing.

I will tell you, I don’t take much from these convos, because I have had so many, but I encourage regular folks to reach out, you never know, your relationship with a councilor or councilors may change your life, your neighborhood or even better this city!

UPDATE: Roberts Rules and Golf Contracts?

l3wis July 23, 2024 6Comments

UPDATE: After the deferral tonight at the city council meeting I asked a city councilor what happened. They responded;

‘It was a joint meeting and there was not a way for the county to be adjourned out. We had no choice last week but to defer to the joint as it was the only one scheduled at the time of deferral. We have to consider before July 27 or it has to be rebid.’

While this totally makes sense, one has to ask yourself how did the clerk allow them to defer to a NON city council meeting to begin with? And then they defer to a meeting on Thursday that seemed like a ‘shell’ meeting for two consent agenda items that have nothing to do with Wednesday, or Sunday.

Seems like the ship already sailed on this bitch.

After the mayor tells us how he is going to spend our tax dollars on pet projects, his wifey is likely brokering, they will conduct their shell meeting with lots of convo about golf cart sheds.

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As someone a few years back said to me randomly who used to do business with Paul’s web thingy,

“The guy is a little weird.”

That one always makes me laugh when I see him say idiotic things in public justifying one of his very bad decisions.

I keep telling chief scowler, open up government and all your stress will go away. But that would be too easy. Wouldn’t it?

Well, Mayor Poops Weirdo has out done his goofiness this week. He decided instead of following Robert’s Rules during meetings he would just ‘attach’ an entirely different meeting to the joint county meeting.

It even says on the item ‘doesn’t concern yah, county!’

I don’t know this Mr. Robert Rules, but have a lot of friends that do and they tell me the proper form would be to adjourn the joint meeting first and have a separate meeting to address the item.

But then how can we get no one to show up and bitch?

The item that needed to be shoved into another separate meeting was the $6.2 Million over budget contract for the new Elmwood Golf Course. Funny how these things get SHOVED into random meetings. FORE! weirdo

Sewage Apples!

l3wis July 22, 2024 2Comments

So I look forward to my special apple tree each year in Cherry Rock park. I noticed early in the summer the tree had a gob of apples growing. Most of the time I can get a 5 gallon pail and that’s about it, this year probably 3x that. So last week I noticed they were about ready to pick, and it was packed. I went home to get my trusty apple picker (thank you cameraman Bruce!) and picked a bag full. I sat them in the window of my dining room to ripen more and a couple of days later I started to cut them up to freeze. The first one was crisp and white but smelled weird. The second the same. The third one that was bigger, smelled like complete sewage. I threw all the apples out and realized that Cherry Rock park as all the parks along the river were under water during the flood and the tree sucked up all that sewage!

Disgusting!

1. Don’t eat any fruit this year from fruit trees in parks along the river.
2. The city needs to do a full environmental cleanup of all the parks along the river!

After the flood I did a ride thru the parks along the bike trail. It was nasty. I am wondering what kind of environmental mediation the city did?