This one has to do with employee privacy and monitoring.
I’m sure some constitutional lawyers could have fun picking this apart. I think this all came about when MMM banned my blog from city computers, in which Staggers complained and the site was NOT blocked to councilors sitting on the dais at the meeting.
The only part I would question is on the third page, 2nd paragraph. While someone could certainly alert HR that a city employee is posting something less then flattering about the city on social media, I don’t think they can ‘monitor’ private social media sites and I am surprised a city employee hasn’t challenged this crap rule written on a bar napkin (that’s what I call EO’s because they don’t mean crap).
City employees don’t give up their 1st Amendment rights once they become employed by the taxpayers, and I would also like to say that city employees have a DUTY to whistleblow when they see corruption, you are protected by Federal Law.
Calling your co-worker a fat bitch on Facebook? Not a good idea. Turning in other city employees for corruption, embezzlement, etc., always good.
As we watch the sh!t storm in DC that is a full throated cluster we don’t need to look to the East, it is occurring right in our town.
I asked the question not long ago, ‘What has TenHaken finished as mayor?’
I will give you the short answer; Nothing
Even his mentorship initiative, that I fully supported, was handed off to the Helpline center with a line item for taxpayers.
He knows how to win elections, raise money and even get others elected, he just doesn’t have a clue of how to lead.
Paul cut his teeth in the political world helping Republicans get elected in his former life, he is a partisan hack, and that is all he knows.
I wouldn’t even classify him as a Republican when I compare him to the likes of Staggers, Stehly and Brekke.
He is an authoritarian businessman that only cares about the green.
The most hilarious part is running a city isn’t really that difficult unless you have a natural disaster to deal with or a mass shooting, but that is also part of the job.
Your duties as councilor or mayor;
• Make government documents and information as open as possible (state law allows local government to determine what information they want to release, I will give you a clue, ALL OF IT. The only thing that should be hidden from the public is personnel files and pending litigation.)
• Collect taxes (but do it in a fiscally responsible manner. I was astonished at the informational meeting today when the city council made this recommendation for legislative priorities. Fiscally responsible bodies actually find ways to cut taxes.)
• Provide infrastructure and services with the taxes provided (I’m a pretty bare bones guy when it comes to how taxes are spent. I think we should only collect enough fees and taxes to have a balanced budget (minimal borrowing) and spend it only on NEEDED public services and infrastructure and let the entertainment and welfare developers fend for themselves. Just look at the millions we have thrown at parking ramps, etc., while we have virtually NO inventory of first time homes or more affordable new housing. If you think the housing crisis is bad now, wait until a year from now when our population growth will bottom out because there is NO place to live in Sioux Falls.)
Jerry Seinfeld said it best, “You know how to take the reservation, you just don’t know how to keep the reservation.”
I have appreciated Megan Reposa’s writing style, but I have been more entertained if not informed by Megan’s very pointed questions at city pressers, with a baby strapped to her(for the record, I am not making fun, I would strap a baby to the front of me, the back of me and maybe have one in a carseat on my head if it means I could get the council to take action).
It’s been awhile since I have seen a local journalist take the council and mayor to task, and it was HOT;
So, fine. Go further the conversation, city officials. Go talk. Talk to every parent in town. Talk to employers. Talk to whoever you need to talk to so you feel like you really understand the problem. But then stop talking and do something.
Let’s make something clear here, I don’t think Reposa was saying our 1,300+ city employees are not doing their jobs, they are, and that mechanism keeps ticking away, I think her criticism was more towards the 9 elected city officials. While it is easy to point fingers at the snowplow operator who missed your driveway with a snowgate or the police officer who gave you a speeding violation, the real issue are the policy makers. City employees can’t enforce anything or cash their paycheck without the consent and approval of the council and mayor, they are the policy body.
I said to someone the other day about the departure of councilor Selberg next year after his 8 years of service(?), “Has he ever been the main sponsor of any piece of legislation or major policy changes besides the Siouxperhero award?” Maybe he has, but I forget.
But it is not just Selberg. Most policy changes are coming from the administration with ZERO input from the council and the king is fine with that.
Councilors current and past starting with Staggers have complained to me that getting anyone from the administration to assist with formulating new legislation is next to impossible because you are put into a loop. Councilors cannot directly discuss policy changes with department heads without consent from the administration, and they must work those changes thru the mayor’s office and not directly with the department head. In other words councilors have told me it ‘creates a loop’ and just puts them on the runaround and the main reason they have discussed having their own attorney to help craft legislation.
Just look at the hoops councilor Neitzert has gone thru with the E2 ordinance. This should have been a slam dunk.
So while Megan’s criticism of the council is definitely warranted until we get a transparent administration willing to give the reigns over to the policy body we will see more inaction by the council and 4 new councilors rolling in next Spring*.
A city official asked me an interesting question yesterday, “So what has this administration finished? What problems or issues have they solved? With all of his initiatives which ones have garnered results?”
I laughed and said something like, “Oh, there has been results, just not the ones he would have liked.”
Maybe Megan caught something I have been missing here, maybe the problem isn’t transparency, or the lack of integrity and ethics or even all the lying and hiding costs from taxpayers, maybe the real problem is the lack of leadership and talent starting at City Hall and slowly rolling down the hill to Carnegie.
Or maybe they just lack courage?
*I heard two more people may drop into the council race. One is a frequent public inputer and the other is a community activist. Not sure what races they would get into? That puts my possible council race count to 6 candidates! Woot! Woot!
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.
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.
Item 6, Sub-Item 22; Entertainment Facilities, Washington Pavilion Building Improvements – Balustrade and Cornice Remodel; To award a bid, McGill Restoration, Inc., $5.9 Million, There is available budget to award this bid out of the Washington Pavilion CIP budget. (this is code for ‘entertainment tax’ the slush fund the Pavilion and city have been using to make repairs to the city owned facility. I have argued for a long time that they could just remove the bad balustrades and plug the holes for a lot less, even though the contractors say otherwise. No one would know any different if they were removed permanently. This should have been done 20 years ago when the problem came up, but now we are looking for a $6 million dollar fix while the Pavilion’s management sits on over $5 million in a savings account. The image below is a photoshop rendition of what the Pavilion would look like without the balustrades. While the city decries tax cuts in their legislative priorities, they seem to have plenty of money for glamor and appearance projects.
Items 20-86 (there are several VL lottery requests in the wake of the recent cap. I implore the council to pull each license and vote on them individually).
Item #96, 2nd Reading: AN ORDINANCE OF THE CITY OF SIOUX FALLS, SD, AMENDING THE CODE OF ORDINANCES OF THE CITY BY AMENDING CHAPTER 37: TAXATION. Sponsor, Mayor, Background & Objective: The proposed changes are a result of the work done by Downtown Sioux Falls, Inc. on the Main Street Sioux Falls Business Improvement District Growth Plan. The Plan proposes additional and enhanced services to best position downtown for growth and to address common issues. Additional funding would be generated by these proposed amendments to achieve the additional and enhanced services. (After this was explained to me, I support the amendments even, but you have to wonder why the mayor is sponsoring a tax increase? The council should have been the ones to bring this forward, but maybe they need 3-4 more full-time employees to assist them with their very difficult job of creating policy. I still think a better approach would be for the parking department to be in charge of the maintenance DTSF since they do collect a majority of parking fees in the downtown area and let DTSF concentrate on marketing, programming and business services with fees collected. DTSF shouldn’t have to beg for tax code changes to water plants and sweep the sidewalks, the city has plenty of money to take care of the maintenance and beautification of downtown).
Item #98, 1st Reading: AN ORDINANCE OF THE CITY OF SIOUX FALLS, SD, AMENDING THE REVISED ORDINANCES OF THE CITY BY ESTABLISHING AN ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION BOARD. Sponsor: Mayor Background & Objective: The purpose of the Sioux Falls Active Transportation Board (ATB) is to advise the city council, city departments, and city boards regarding bicycle, pedestrian, and other active transportation and accessible pedestrian transportation modes. (While this is a great idea, this should have been initiated by the city council, like the homeless task force. The council will ultimately have to vote on any changes and they should be actively involved in shaping these policies moving forward. Just another fancy task force the mayor and his staff have cooked up to make it look like they are doing something. I heard in the first meeting they will spend the first 45 minutes rearranging chairs in the conference room. As an all season bicyclist and active street rider since the early 90’s in Sioux Falls, I would love to sit on this board and give my perspective of what I have seen. I would apply, but most likely my application would end up where my other city board’s applications have ended up 🙂
Item #99, A RESOLUTION APPROVING THE MINNESOTA AVENUE CORRIDOR PHASE I LAND USE REPORT. Sponsor: Mayor, Background & Objective: That the City of Sioux Falls adopts the Minnesota Avenue Phase I Land Use Report to provide policies and guidance for future rezoning proposals, conditional use requests, redevelopment grant funding, and other redevelopment proposals. (I have been watching this construction play out, and from what I have been hearing from residents and business owners in the affected area is that while the city has been having listening/learning sessions they ultimately are doing what they want to with little to no regard from private recommendations. Minnesota Avenue should have started this process 30 years ago. I remember De Knudson and Dr. Staggers recommending changes to this corridor with no avail. I guess better late then never.
Item #100, A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR TO ENTER INTO AN AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE CITY OF SIOUX FALLS AND WASHINGTON PAVILION MANAGEMENT, INC. FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF THE WASHINGTON PAVILION OF ARTS AND SCIENCE, ORPHEUM THEATER, AND THE MUNICIPAL BAND. Background & Objective: Resolution to approve entering into a five-year management agreement with Washington Pavilion Management, Inc. to manage the Washington Pavilion of Arts and Science, Orpheum Theater, and the Sioux Falls Municipal Band. Agreement covers the years 2023-2027. Details of the new proposed Agreement were presented at the City Council’s Informational Meeting on November 22. (While there was a presentation on the renewal, the Pavilion talked very little about their financial status. Do they really need an operating subsidy from the city when we dump millions into the place each year in maintenance? I think with $5 million in savings – growing a whopping $2 million last year – it is time the Pavilion put on their big kid pants and operated on their own coin considering NOTHING is FREE to use in the building except the toilet and water fountain. It certainly hasn’t become the place for ‘everyone’ but is has been costing ‘everyone’ in Sioux Falls a pretty penny.)
• Legislative Priorities. Their priorities seem to be PRO-TAX for citizens while advocating for a tax break for themselves;
4. We support efforts to eliminate double taxation on public projects through the state use and contractor’s excise taxes.
I would agree that making citizens pay excise taxes on public projects is silly, BUT it is the contractors who build the projects that pay the tax. If this tax is eliminated, would the contractor pass those savings onto the city?
5. We oppose any legislation that would reduce or repeal any municipal or county tax.
This of course may apply to the food tax. I think it is incredibly short-sighted to support a food tax cut statewide but not municipal. I think if we eliminate the food tax in Pierre, it needs to apply to cities also. I have also argued for a long time, the city is overtaxing us. If you have over $70 million in your reserves (a savings account) you have to ask yourself if the city is collecting too much in taxes. I don’t care how large the city’s budget is, there is NO justification of having that much in reserves.
7. We support tax increment financing (TIF), an economic development tool that has led to millions of dollars in increased property value, benefitting both the state as a whole and the local entities sponsoring the districts, while at the same time maintaining the integrity of the process.
Integrity of the process? Benefits? As I have stated over the years, there has been NO comprehensive independent study of what those benefits are and the process. I recently received a tip that one of the more recent TIFs the city council issued was based on NO financial review of the recipient, or at least not a comprehensive one. Did we learn anything from the bunker ramp fiasco? Maybe Neitzert is right, maybe we need to do an investigation to see just how bad city government screwed the pooch on that one.
Speaking of process integrity, I was made aware last week that a current city director is being asked now to run two separate departments that have very little to do with each other. While he is an educated, qualified director for the one department he currently runs he has zero qualifications for running the other department. While we could surmise why PTH makes such idiotic decisions (he has NO leadership skills) you have to wonder why this director would agree to such a thing, even with a significant pay increase? I guess when he quits in frustration or gets fired the administration will just chalk it up as par for the coarse. I think Amazon management has a lower turnover rate.
Item 5A, Petition:CU-017246-2022: Conditional Use Permit to allow for a Full Service Restaurant within 250′ of a sensitive land use. Operations will include On-Sale Alcohol with supplemental video lottery located at 7601 S. LOUISE AVE.
What I find interesting about this item is how some entities will come to the planning commission asking for conditional use permits without even having a business name. If you review the documents you will see this is basically a 3 tiered casino that has a pizza oven.
He envisions a restaurant centered around brick-oven pizza and with pasta dishes, salads and other family-friendly menu items.
Nothing says family friendly like 30 video lottery machines and a pepperoni pizza. “Where’s dad?” Asks Johnny. “He’s hopefully winning this month’s rent in the other room.” Mom replies.
