The most frustrating part is that I warned previous planning chair Janet Kittams that they need to say why they are recusing themselves, what item, who they work for, etc. She blew me off, but no surprise, they all eat from the same government trough. In fact, it is in city ordinance and state law that they MUST disclose why they are recusing themselves. I noticed a couple of years ago that the Planning (rubber stamp) Commission started pushing stuff in the consent agenda. And for good reason, the members have so many conflicts they started pushing those conflicts into a consent agenda so they would seem ethical. But when you recuse yourself you MUST tell us WHY and what ITEM. The new chair, Bradyn Neises, who works for Bender Realtors, has a clear conflict, but he can’t tell us what it is. Our city government is so corrupt it is almost laughable. The planning commission should consist of RETIRED developers who don’t have a skin in the game, or just regular folks who work in development or construction. The planning commission is made up of grifters. Every single one of them has grifted from the city, and they sit on this board to make sure the grifting continues. That’s it, there is NOT one single person on that board that is not benefitting from taxpayer revenue, and it is disgusting.
It also got better at the end of the meeting where the chair decided he had some muscle after eating cookies in the anti-room while they were approving his projects and he cut off a public comment inputer before they were adjourned. It was a serious DICK move, and totally militant anti-open government. Why do they even record these meetings? Why not just do it in an opium den in the basement of Carnegie? You obviously don’t want to be honest and forthright with the public, so why keep putting on the act? The Planning Commission is a ‘Basket of Grifters’ and little else. It’s time to ween these sucklings.
According to KXLG News, Harrisburg City Administrator Amanda Mack confirmed that the city has offered Heath VonEye a position as Deputy City Administrator. VonEye is currently Watertown’s Assistant City Manager and Public Works Director.
VonEye accepted the offer, but there is no start date as VonEye still needs to complete the resignation with the City of Watertown.
The new position comes with an annual salary of $195,000.
Amanda Mack was the previous City Manager of Watertown and resigned, which the Watertown City Council made effective on November 25. VonEye chose not to accept the Interim City Manager position and the city’s Chief Financial Officer, Kristen Bobzien, holds the title.
Watertown Mayor Ried Holien told KXLG News that the city was unaware VonEye was seeking employment elsewhere. The mayor also has a succession committee that will assist with selecting a new Watertown City Manager.
Word from residents in Harrisburg is that Mack and VonEye were BOTH hired without properly posting the jobs online, in a legal paper or the Municipal League website, still digging around on that. As for the executive session to let Mack go early which was a clear violation of open meeting laws, there may be a reason they didn’t want the ‘dirty laundry’ of city staff on full display and were willing to take the hit to cover it up. Let’s just say the rumors I have heard would not only disqualify BOTH candidates to work for the city of Watertown but also for Harrisburg. Then there is the nepotism. I certainly don’t know the reason why she was fired early, but if the rumors are true they will eventually be revealed and Harrisburg is going to have a lot of mud on their face when it is all over. Watertown is beyond help.
A tweet by mayor PTH on December 31, 2024, praising a contractor city bond lawyer, suggested potential coming economic disasters we must prepare for, likely to start in 2025, affecting us for many decades to come.
Every time a bond payment is made on any for the local play palaces our mayors Paul or Mike insisted get built, it costs us taxpayers. Every one of the payments is part of our tax burden. Each of the buildings, swimming pools, event centers, offices, and parking ramps, was a creation of their egos at our expense. Every one of the bond payments came from somewhere, starving something else. Now the city is planning to build roads using bonds over time with interest expense paid to be paid by the limited 2nd penny. These bonds must have money from somewhere. The city adopted the infrastructure 2nd penny sales tax to build required infrastructure. It is still money coming from taxpayers. Very little of the 2nd penny is coming from out of town. Debt is debt and must be paid somehow by us. None of the bonds have benefited the many, only the few.
Remember a few short years ago when mayor Paul got upset because a city council member clearly articulated the infrastructure project was going to strip money from the taxpayers by increasing water & sewer bills? The councilmember wanted a clear statement of how much it was to cost and how the burden was to be paid. The mayor and his staff claimed a low figure just to say she was wrong. Guess what, they lied. Each of our mayors have tried to be clever by claiming their projects were not going to cost us anything. In the end, each one of their projects were not built to the claimed high standards or for the price stated. Once built, each were not taken care of properly because the city didn’t have the 1st penny operating money necessary for upkeep.
Each convinced us the “great investments” in play palaces, will not cost us, only pay dividends. There is no way to get something for nothing and the worst part it is usually only for a place to play. The average taxpayer must be burdened so the developers and flim-flam promoters can play. Sure, every tourist who comes to Sioux Falls to witness our boom town by the falls may pay some sales tax, but like the Denty, the minuscule sales tax collected by the activities don’t come close to paying the wear and tear upkeep on the buildings, much less cover the bond payments. The dividends went to the contractors hired to save the mess from disaster.
We the taxpayers lose money on every act or show that comes to Sioux Falls. The minuscule sales tax does not replace the dollars that are stripped from our local businesses and their chance to survive. These events send our potential economic multiplier out of town promoters, stopping the circulation of the money in our town by sending to far off lands, never to be seen again. Temporary memories for long term pain. Dividends at our expense.
Sioux Falls has historically suffered less when the national economy has tanked, because we have had good local multiplier effect. By promoting the ego gratifying celebrity groups coming to Sioux Falls every year, takes hundreds of millions of multiplier dollars out of our area economy. Just to say Pink, Elton John or some half-assed Nashville celebrity is coming to town to take away more of our money. Dividends at our expense.
So, we already have witnessed how stripping money out of a community kills solid future growth of many cities. We already have experienced the waste, building of play palaces we can’t afford to keep up. Just look at the poor construction of the Denty, the financial frauds and lies committed in the administration building, the settlements and huge payments on the underused and poorly conceived bunker ramp and you will see the egos of the bonders and city officials had to be protected. Dividends at our expense.
Being proud of bonding $545 million is jarring and now our “wise city leaders” want to scam an unnecessary $70 million for pools plus another $400 million out of us taxpayers for more farfetched dreams of reviving a dying convention business, by building another set of buildings we will never be able to afford. If the rumored insider deals being discussed are true, we Sioux Falls taxpayers will be paying in many more ways than just taxes and lost economic multipliers, we may see court hearings and more. Dividends at our expense.
Do you remember The Music Man? The production could have been based on the music men parked in 9th and Main corner offices. Our leaders are still playing the parts written by Meredith Willson, that of liars, charlatans, and just plain scammers, like the Iowa based Music Man civic leaders. They all drank the juice of the salesman selling dreams. Dividends at our expense.
The Music Man was about a con man promising to teach the town’s children to play in a marching band, if they people buy his scam. The musical was set in 1912, in the fictional town of River City, Iowa, based on the writer’s birthplace of Mason City, Iowa. The production popularized songs like “Seventy-Six Trombones,” “Trouble” and “Gary, Indiana”. Well, the show had a happy ending, but it showed the gullibility of our midwestern small towns dreaming of being something that they can never be, except to be gullible to the flim-flam salesman. We small towners continue to compare to big cities and dream of being something that can never be except gullible to the latest flim-flam salesman selling bonds. We never seem to learn the lessons of our past. Dividends at our expense.
The Music Man may have had a fictional happy ending, but I don’t hold out hope for Sioux Falls. I will leave you with this final thought, when will we not be gullible suckers of the latest our community’s Music Man?
The city’s parking ramp on Mall Avenue also remains a prospective redevelopment site.
“It’s not costing the taxpayers a dime to have it sit there, so we’re not in a huge rush to have something,” TenHaken said. “The time will come and the market will change, and it’s still a valuable piece of land. We still get interest and inquiries.”
Maybe it was Poops attempt at humor at the end of the year, but it’s not funny, and it is definitely NOT FREE. In fact a major chunk of the parking department’s revenue goes towards the bond payments, there is also maintenance and paying workers to maintain the facility. I figured a few years ago about 60-80% of the years total revenue in parking goes towards the bonds and maintenance on this ONE facility which takes away from other parking upgrades downtown.
It’s costing us . . . a lot.
Poops knows he f’d this up and he could have stopped it but he cowered to the bondsters and gave in (because he is an extremely poor leader). He could have gained support on the council to cancel the bond but he did what he normally does, ignore the gorilla in the room hoping they will go away. Many want to blame Huether, but old elbow assaulter didn’t sign off on the bonds, Poops did. This is all on him. I still laugh at the presser he gave with Lamont saying he was good for the investment because he gave the city a letter saying so (a last will and testament on a bar napkin would have more legal precedent). Poops does everything by the seat of his pants and wonders why they turn out the way they do, then lies about the result. Here’s the deal, PAUL, we are paying dearly for your F’up, DEARLY, but instead of taking the blame you just lie. When you call yourself a Christian, I just shake my head. I attended Catholic and Lutheran services growing up, and I never recall a minister or priest saying it was okay to lie as long as you are covering up a screwup. You are a fraud.
Probably one of the most under rated presidents. I was born in 1972 after the Nixon fiasco, so Jimmy was my man. I often tell folks besides Nixon bringing it up, Carter warned us of climate change and if the SOB would not have beat him in 1980, we would have had real change. I still remember election day in 1980 or shortly after and my grandpa talking about the presidential election, “I voted for Jimmy, he is a good man.” It was classic Carl sarcasm, it was a dig on Reagan. Man how they hated Reagan.
l3wis 