Is the ‘Council Curse’ Real?

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Some are starting to wonder if the ‘council curse’ when it comes to mayoral elections really does exist.

I had a brief conversation with a city director before the Wednesday council meeting, we talked about the election. They brought up the ‘council curse’ and how it knocked out a lot of great candidates like Greg, Kenny and Jim and others over the years including Vernon Brown, Darrin Smith, Kermit Staggers, Pat Costello, etc.

One of the reasons I felt Stehly wouldn’t win a mayoral race is because of the ‘council curse’.

So why does this keep happening? One reason is because many people want ‘new beginnings’ with a new mayor, and not a lot of people from the old guard. I also think voters like people who are NOT from government. I get this a little, but I would like a mayor to have ‘some kind’ of government experience. Both Paul and Jo do have some experience. Probably Jo more than Paul. While Paul has helped with many successful campaigns in the past, it doesn’t hurt to be on the winning team to begin with (Republicans). Besides pushing for Jolene’s Law, Jo has also been involved with school district issues.

There has also been a ‘turnover’ of voters since the last mayoral election. Some longtime reliable voters have dropped off, and with our massive population growth, there was probably at least 4,000 new voters. The drawback of the new voters is that they tend to NOT have any historical background of city business.

A great example of this is when people talk about transparency, as if it just reared it’s head a year ago. This has been going on since Munson was mayor, and Huether perfected it. Huether even made it a campaign issue during his first term run in 2010, he vowed to be the ‘most transparent mayor ever’. Yeah, we jest now.

So who do I blame for voters getting caught up with emotion instead of policy when they vote? The candidates are somewhat to blame, but our local news media is not very good at covering the ‘controversies’. Before Lalley’s show, there was virtually no local radio station really talking about the real issues with city government. Belfrage throws softballs at the mayor, and when he talks about the meetings, it is pretty obvious he didn’t watch them himself. Our TV stations try to steer away from controversy especially when it may involve their major sponsors. While our local newspaper does a good job going a little more in depth, their readership is not so great.

We also have to share a little blame with the city for not promoting the election that well, and that blame should also lie with our local service organizations like Rotary, Chamber, etc.

Maybe the runoff will all surprise us. But either way, the next mayor won’t be a former city councilor . . . not that there is anything wrong with that.

Posted in: Elections, Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls City Council Central District Race Cluster

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Of all the races in the upcoming city election, this is the most intriguing.

While there are many good candidates running, I’m leaning towards Thor Bardon, Bank Fraud Specialist. I like his back ground story, his analytical stance on governance and compassion for the average citizen.

Zach DeBoer is also a wonderful candidate. His passion for public art and re-developing our core would make him a great councilor.

Tom Hurlbert also stands out as someone who would serve the public well by guiding our city council with planning and zoning. Tom owns an architecture firm.

I don’t know much about Scott Bartlett accept that he tends to lean a little to the far right with Tea Party politics.

Curt Soehl is a former firefighter who now sells insurance. I think our past adventures with insurance salesmen (Karsky and Rolfing) should tell us we have had our fill. He is also a staunch supporter of Huether and Erpenbach polices that allow big development to run our town.

I hope to see Hurlbert and Bardon in the run-off.

There will be NO other run-offs in the council race, only mayor and central district due to some candidates not getting in enough petition signatures.

Kiley unfortunately didn’t have a challenger, so he will skirt in. I think the last time a councilor was unchallenged for 2nd term was Staggers. Trust me Cameraman Bruce and I tried very hard to find a challenger, we probably spoke to over 5 people, but many of them had different conflicts and couldn’t swing it.

I’m pushing for Brekke in At-Large ‘A’ and Weiland for At-Large ‘B’. Brekke’s challenger seems to be running the same campaign as last time, in which he lost to Stehly. Weiland’s challenger, Erickson, has had a very non-citizen friendly record over the past year, and needs to go.

Posted in: Elections, SF City Council, Sioux Falls

Washington Pavilion Contract likely to be renewed with little to no oversight and review

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With all of the kerfuffle about the secret siding settlement and secret RFP process, it seems the city council has learned little to nothing. And I’m not talking about a select few, I’m talking about ALL of them.

The Washington Pavilion is up for contract renewal soon (Finance Director Tracy Turbak is expected to do a short presentation next Tuesday, November 7 at the informational with a resolution by the council of approval on Novemeber 14.) And that easily the Pavilion will have renewed their 5 year contract with the city, with little questioning, little review, no accountability, and no outside competition.

We wonder what went wrong with the EC siding? Well a little combination of all of the above and you create a perfect storm for corruption. So don’t act shocked when bad things happen.

I enjoy the Pavilion and go to shows there and enjoy the visual arts center (though it should be free again) but that doesn’t mean the council should just blindly take their word that everything is on the up an up when it comes to the day to day operations.

Let’s look at some concerning factors;

The Pavilion hasn’t had a city audit in over 10 years.

Besides a subsidy to their operations, the city spends millions from the entertainment tax fund for brick and mortar upgrades to the city owned building each year with little oversight to those upgrades.

The Pavilion hasn’t shown us a financial report since 2015. The 2016 report is still NOT finished. That’s right, only 2 weeks away from a contract renewal and the 2016 audit is NOT complete yet. The Pavilion claims they are saving money by having the audit so late in the year. Yah, sure, you betcha.

The Pavilion management has changed so many hands in 5 years it’s hard to keep track who is in charge. And since Darrin Smith has been in charge many long time and short time directors and management have left. Has anyone asked why? Nope, just get out the rubber stamps, than in 3 years we can put a cute timeline together of what went wrong, because that is much easier than asking the tough questions to begin with.

Than there is the NEW leader of the Pavilion. A former city councilor who quit mid-term after losing a mayoral bid. Re-appeared to dig up false dirt on Staggers winning him a job in the Huether administration as director of community development (something he knows nothing about) in which he screws up the DT parking ramp deal (and we keep throwing thousands of dollars at the project) and runs away once again to another job. This time he lands his feet as the director of the Pavilion, still cashing in on the taxpayer buck. Here he decides to wait 10 months before auditing the year before, than not only appoints a youth minister cartoonist to run the arts center but also the science center, I heard soon he will be also in charge of cleaning the rain gutters.

It seems the city council can’t understand why they have so much controversy surrounding the lack of transparency, secret settlements, and no oversight. If they approve the Pavilion contract without truly digging in what has been happening there over the past 5 years, they only reap what they sew.

Posted in: SF City Council, Sioux Falls, Washington Pavilion

What? Code Enforcement? No, citizen abuse and dumpsters

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Who would have thought this video would touch such a nerve when we posted it in 2014. City employee Darin McDonald was fined for his dumpsters during an interesting time of property transfers in his neighborhood. Dan Daily had the SD Supreme Court declare code enforcement process in Sioux Falls unconstitutional and still has not been fixed. Cameraman Bruce was arrested for raspberries and garlic only to have the judge tell the city to leave his yard alone.
Project Trim, flowers in the boulevards, campers, grass, snow, sidewalks and so many citizen irritations caused by overzealous out of control city administrations. There are so many more and we will be highlighting them as we can get the information. If you have a story to tell, let us know. You never know what can be done.
The fallout is happening and it is filling dumpsters. South Dakota has already declared this process unconstitutional but Sioux Falls keeps doing it anyway. Testimony on Tuesday September 9, 2014 was an interesting day for the City Council of Sioux Falls SD.
During the open discussion portion of the regular council Informational session, Kermit Staggers brought up a discussion of code enforcement abuse performed by city officers on behalf of troubled neighbors. It was a good topic to bring up.
Some of the councilors did not understand why it was an issue. It seems the people being abused don’t feel their councilors care enough to help them to even ask them for help. Who is left to answer and fight for the average public? Kermit.
Michele Erpenbach and Dean Karsky decide to stick up for the mayor and his administration. Nothing new from them. Greg Jamison tries to discuss the compromise reached among the council a few years ago but they seem to have forgotten to reach out to the community, like usual.
At the Public Input portion of the regular Council meeting, Darrin McDonald had a great presentation on the city snitch program. Dumpsters, dumpsters and more dumpsters mostly owned by the city are in violation of city code. Where are the citations due the mayor, Pavilion, Sheraton?
Before the City Hall lurkers bombard us with abuse they should look at their own backsides.
The Council needs to rein in the code enforcement mess in Sioux Falls. Code enforcers are used by nasty ‘Good’ neighbors to hurt many neighbors in this best little city. Once a citizen tries to work with our code enforcement staff, they know you are a sucker, so look out. Once they know you are weak, they will find ways to abuse the law to hurt you. So look out.
Cameraman Bruce Danielson
Posted in: Code Enforcement, SF City Council, Sioux Falls

UPDATE: Siding Settlement Decision; How did we get here?

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While I would love to be chugging vodka tonics right now until I forget my name, I’m afraid the celebration won’t be for awhile. I don’t expect to see the secret settlement anytime soon. The city has many options. At the earliest they could delay this for 90 days while considering an appeal to the Federal Supreme Court (I don’t think they would go that far). They could also ask for a reconsideration from the SD Supreme Court, which could take several months. I’m also sure there is a whole other bag of tricks they could pull out. Unfortunately they are using our tax dollars to keep secrets about our tax dollars secret.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone, as we all know, the Mayor’s administration is anti-transparency, and it has been getting worse. The majority of the city council is no longer let in on RFP and BID negotiations, not even in executive session. Many are asking how are they supposed to vote on projects like Tuesday’s UPTOWN II when have no idea what the other proposals were.

UPDATE: Theresa said it best on Stormland TV last night;

Stehly hopes this decision leads to more transparency in local government in the future.

“It’s problematic when we have the media being left out, the citizens being left out, and the city council being left out. Who’s running the show?”

Would you like me to answer that question? Probably NOT. Props to Mallory and his videographer  for the great camera work on the story and all the close ups of the siding. I think when people look at the siding at a distance, they really don’t comprehend how bad it is until you get up close and see all the gaps, holes and rust stains.

So how did we get here?

Bruce Danielson (South DaCola’s cameraman) actually mentioned to me that he was concerned about how they were installing the siding around the curved part of the Denty. He was concerned about the Tyvek application and wondered also why they were installing the siding from the top going downward. I went out and looked at it to, and it seemed strange. As some time went by after the installation, we both got a closer look and were not impressed with the bulging and ripples. At that point we were just asking question amongst ourselves, independent engineers and construction folks.

Than councilor Rex Rolfing opened his big fat mouth.

One afternoon I was watching the city council meeting informational and during open discussion Rex Rolfing said that constituents (his golf buddies) had been mentioning to him they were concerned about the dented appearance of the siding.

I quickly asked Danielson if he heard what Rex had said, and at that point we knew we had to go forward with taking a closer look.

At first SF media ignored us, including the Argus Leader. There was so much anticipation at that point for the grand opening, no one wanted to rock the boat. Luckily we had councilor Staggers on the council at the time to ask more questions of staff.

Once the media got more involved and you could tell just by looking at the siding itself, something wasn’t right. The city started to pay attention and put several different plans in place which resulted in many empty promises and ultimately the secret settlement. I’m glad the AL is owned by a multi-billion dollar corporation that can afford to take these cases to court. The public would have been screwed without the lawsuit. I would also like to thank Ellis, Albrecht, Lalley, Hult and Sneve for listening to us. My poor little blog could not have done this on it’s own, though Bruce and I had several lonely nights trying to convince people this deal stunk.

What is most likely in the contract?

I have worked out several scenarios in my head, I’m not going to list them all, they would just baffle you even more. My best educated guess is that there never really was a settlement except on paper. We think there was $1 million left over in constingency funds (We borrowed that money with the EC construction bond). My guess is that instead of the money going to Mortenson as a bonus at the end, Mortenson just let the city keep it. And since this was money that was already borrowed, the city couldn’t just give the million back to the bonds as a early principal payment. In other words, Mortenson let us keep a million of our own money.

So why do I think this is the most likely scenario? Because many of the people listed in the settlement had little to nothing to do with the installation of the siding on the curved portion of the Denty. This has been verified to me by several people. Why would anyone pay a (cash) settlement out for a job they didn’t botch? So why were they listed on the settlement than? As I understand it, because they AGREED to NOT do the work. I know, sounds just as bizarre as Bruce being incarcerated for 6 hours on a penny bond over a stack of shingles in his backyard, the same night he was set to do a major public input presentation on the EC siding.

Of course, this is all pure speculation, because up until this point, the settlement is still secret, and I guarantee the Mayor will fight tooth and nail to keep it that way. No worries, I’ll keep my vodka bottle(s) on ice.

Posted in: Denny Sanford Premier Center, Event Center, Sioux Falls