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1st Amendment County Commission Minnehaha County SF City Council Sioux Falls

Daily Affirmation

l3wis 3Comments

What a week of craziness in Sioux Falls. Most of what I am going to talk about deserves a full blog post, but I decided more of a snark;

• Classified documents at Carnegie Town Hall. Last night a constituent told me they showed up to the city council meeting and went to the entry podium to collect the agenda. To their surprise there was a stack of legal documents sitting on the podium. They suspected they were left there accidentally and turned them over to the council.

At least they didn’t find them crumpled up in the toilet.

• The Sioux Falls City Council hires a new city clerk. Mr. Washington was hired Tuesday night by the council. Mr. Washington was NOT in attendance (he lives in Rapid City) but I was at least expecting a phone in to answer a few benign questions. Nope. Council Chair Selberg said he was a great guy and they voted for him. The council did have a private interview with Mr. Washington but it would have been nice to get an intro to the public.

• 1st Amendment Minnehaha County case taking to long to decide. Call me old school, but when I read the 1st Amendment it is not to hard to figure out, especially this line;

to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I’m puzzled why it would take so long for a Federal Judge to make such an easy decision? It will be interesting to see what is carved out for the county, because it doesn’t take over 20 days to figure out our civil rights.

• Minnehaha County Commissioners bail on carbon setbacks. Not surprising the new bought and paid for MCC has decided that property owners only get 300 feet to save themselves from an exploding pipeline. How thoughtful of them. I still concede that in 10 years most hazardous pipelines are moth balled as we realize the benefits and cost saving measures of wind, solar and nuclear. This is a money making scheme and always has been.

• Pride Festival this weekend! The good news is we get to celebrate LOVE this weekend, the sad part is there are still elected officials in our community who refuse to acknowledge that love. F’k em! They would ruin the party anyway!

• YIELD FOR BICYCLISTS! I was in three close calls this week, one was my fault, but I encourage drivers to always be aware of your surroundings and look for pedestrians, motorcycles and bicyclists. I also encourage bicyclists to be sharp when riding and yield twice.

• Rapid City gets a new mayor! So this former Veteran, Banker, Alderman and current Pastor wants to be the next mayor of Rapid City. Awesome! I still liked the O’SHT face on him when he had his first presser. He’s going to figure it out. Well if you are so inclined to share your secret recipes, can you pass them on to our mayor? You can usually catch him doing calisthenics with kids at one of our private Sioux Falls Christian schools. I know, super weird.

• Show me the money! Once again city officials had no problem taking money from our old father time and faux namesake of our city. Gifts are Gifts but one has to wonder about funding a spray park for kids with a selfie photo booth? Not to mention a project that has ballooned from around $4 million to four times that. Not sure why we need Disneyland at Falls Park?

The ‘donations’ always crack me up. They are paying for ADDITIONAL infrastructure that we have to maintain for decades as taxpayers. Not sure what the benefit is? It’s kind of like being handed your dream car for free (mine is the Ferrari Dino) but you have to maintain it, pay the taxes and fees on it, store it and insure it. I will stick with my Civic.

• More rail traffic in Sioux Falls. I have virtually given up moving the trains out of Sioux Falls, but what troubles me is that citizens have no avenue of addressing this locally, statewide or Federally. Ironically, roadblocks have been systematically setup over decades by the vicious control by our railroads.

Public Works SF City Council Sioux Falls Theresa Stehly

UPDATE: Who was mocking Theresa Stehly at the Sioux Falls City Council meeting last night?

l3wis 12Comments

UPDATE: It was confirmed to me from those in the chambers that it was Mayor TenHaken who was mocking Theresa, as we all suspected. I still think this clown show could be prevented at meetings if 1) we put public input at the beginning of the agenda and 2) rescind the council rule to interact with the public during input.

I think I know the voice of the gentleman softly mocking Theresa last night during public input of Item #51 (click on the item and the video will fast forward) but I will let you make your own assumptions.

Theresa was reminiscing about her time on the council and the presentation of the new waste water treatment plant when she started to bring up her recollection of the process.

She said she requested an amortization schedule from Public Works Director, Mark Cotter, at the time for paying off the waste water bonds. During her input you could hear someone on the dais quietly mock her. When Theresa says that we may have cost overruns on the project, ‘someone’ on the dais mumbles into their microphone ‘Oh Yeah? Really?’ in a sarcastic voice. Stehly also talks about the public being left in the dark and this same passive aggressive voice whimpers from the dais ‘Hmmmm’ and later ‘Uh Huh.’

Like I said, you have a pretty good guess who was being a brat from the bench, but the individual doing this doesn’t really matter. The fact is the public is constantly told by the chairs of these council meetings that we need to practice ‘decorum’ at these meetings because gosh golly three cub scouts showed up while all the time they are personally acting like kids who got their ball stolen.

Someone needs to tell these folks it’s study hall time not recess time.

Affordable Housing Downtown Sioux Falls Rich Merkouris SF City Council Sioux Falls

What’s going on with our TIFilicious, affordable(?) housing project in North Brandon?

l3wis 1Comments

I was just thinking about this the other day . . . and for me and the good pastor, Sioux Falls City Councilor, Rich Merkouris, to have the same inquisitive thoughts, it was a little eerie.

During the informational Rich asked our housing specialist, Logan Penfield, what was going on with the North Brandon project and Logan responded by saying he wasn’t sure and had to get back to Rich.

Seems a bit odd doesn’t it?

Councilor Merkouris just stepped into the vice chair leadership position a few weeks ago. So now with a few weeks of insider baseball under his belt he seemed to pull this question from the sky . . .

. . . and after doing a long presentation on a housing action plan you would think Mr. Penfield would have the answer to that question on the tip of his tongue. But Mr. Penfield has experience in good old Washington, a place where it is best to ignore the hard questions.

I was thinking about the project because after all the fanfare you would have thought there would have been a ribbon cutting already with dirt moving? Instead a staffer from the administration (who is in charge of projects like this) hands over a big fat I don’t know with a shoulder shrug.

While the administration may think it is Sioux Falls ONE it is more like Sioux Falls IDK.

religion

The Dangers of the Prosperity Gospel Evangelical movement

l3wis 4Comments

Trust me, I didn’t just have an awakening, I have been concerned about the political force of this group for a long time. They have infiltrated most sectors of our life including our public one in local governments. Many on our local boards would consider themselves a part of this movement.

I recommend you watch this Vanity Fair/FX miniseries on Hillsong and see for yourself how the leaders of this movement are the biggest hypocrites to walk the face of the earth;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSgiyTf5GH8

I am pretty sure the Righteous Gemstones is based on Hillsong.

Elections Rapid City

UPDATE: Who will win the Rapid City Mayoral Race today?

l3wis 4Comments

UPDATE: I was off a bit, Salamun wins Rapid City mayor.

I will admit I knew about the election, but not until about 5 minutes ago I decided to research the candidates. I know nothing about any of them except for what I read today.

Just based on donations, I would give the victory to Estes, but since this is a plurality election, I think the three other men running would steal votes from Estes giving the victory to Armstrong (who is the only woman running).

I guess we will see.

Either way, these two will likely be in spots 1 and 2. Estes seems like a moderate businessman while Armstrong tends to be moderate to progressive.

I think it would be quite an upset tonight if Armstrong squeaks by.

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