Downtown Sioux Falls is turning into a great place to take a nap

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Mind you, the guy below may have been just legitimately taking an ‘intended’ nap, though I think laying in the sun at 6 PM in the evening probably wasn’t ‘planned’. He also didn’t look homeless, he had on brand new sneakers and a nice backpack.

But the bigger point is more and more I have been seeing people DTSF taking ‘naps’ in some of the most random spots, and others have noticed. It happens a lot around the Dudley House and Nelson Park. The other day I saw a guy passed out in front of the Holiday Inn on the sidewalk.

While I have seen this along the bike trails for years, it seems this summer the locations of these ‘naps’ are becoming more dangerous.

I guess yesterday a drunken brawl broke out by the Dudley House until a citizen broke it up. I have thought all along concentrating our homeless services in a neighborhood was NOT a good idea. I had suggested like the County’s Safe Home that a shelter should have been built by the jail.

Posted in: Downtown Sioux Falls, Homeless, Sioux Falls

Are the Railroads blowing smoke?

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So I got this email forwarded to me by a city councilor yesterday, I’m not sure who sent them this (SF public works or BNSF) but I found it a bit humorous, to say the least;

We evaluated the potential changes to railroad operations as part of the Environmental Assessment (EA) for the project.  There is a BNSF Sioux Falls Operations Plan that is in the appendix of the EA.  It was anticipated that an extra 2 to 5 rail cars per month would need to utilize this area for parking and storage due to the track removal in the downtown yard.

If there is additional train traffic above this estimated amount, it is likely due to a higher customer demand, not because of the Rail Yard Redevelopment project.  For instance, Egger Steel is one of the businesses served by the track in this neighborhood and may be receiving or shipping additional steel due to market needs.

It’s no secret, Former Mayor Bucktooh & Bowlcut used to tell some pretty tall tales, but, after reading this, it is no surprise to me that the two (BNSF) negotiated the worst agreement in the history of our city.

First off, I don’t think I have ever thought the RR Redevelopment project has been causing the extra cars to be parked in the area, my point is that we should have negotiated that NO cars can be parked in the area. We gave BNSF millions to build a new switchyard out of downtown, why don’t they use it?

As for the 2 to 5 cars, LMFAO! If you go by the Nelson Park skate park or just North of Avera you will see between 40-60 cars parked in those area’s over the weekend and throughout the week. Are some of them steel cars? A few, I guess, but most are grain, lumber and biofuel cars.

I fully understand that we will still have to have rail traffic through downtown due to the suppliers, but I question why we need to park and switch these cars in this area? Seems the Railroads are blowing a lot of smoke.

Posted in: Downtown Sioux Falls, Railroads, Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls City Councilor Rex Rolfing berates one of his fellow city councilors using taxpayer funded media

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Leave it to Rex Rolfing to get one last dig in on Stehly before he leaves. Ironically his stint on Inside Town Hall was supposed to be about a cemetery and his ‘accomplishments’ on city council. He could only name things that we the taxpayer’s paid for (but didn’t get to have a say in).

When mentioning the indoor pool at Spellerberg he commented that it should have been built at Drake Springs and that just a ‘few’ people got involved and a ‘few’ people voted against in an indoor pool.

Actually, Stehly and Co. collected several thousand signatures and several thousand voters approved an outdoor pool at the location.

As for the location, as I have mentioned numerous times, Nelson park would have been a terrible location for an indoor pool due to ground water issues as our very own aquatic consultant told us when recommending the Spellerberg location.

What is even more troubling is that Rolfing made these statements about a fellow councilor (without saying her name) on a media source funded by taxpayers. He also rips on her at the end of the show about not collaborating. Not sure if my memory serves me, but I think there is an ethics violation in there somewhere.

He was also asked what he would tell future councilors, he would recommend changing public input, he said in his opinion it is ‘Too Darn Long.’ He went on to rant that ‘he can’t have everyone in Sioux Falls telling him what to do.’ Hey Rex, you know as a councilor you are a representational officer of the people? He basically defends his votes that are against the citizenry on closed government. LOL! A closed government he adamantly supported.

Isn’t it amazing this guy has learned nothing about government in the 8 long years he has been there. Rex, do you need help moving to Florida?

Posted in: Rex Rolfing, SF City Council, Sioux Falls

Reducing Rail Traffic was part of Munson’s 2005 RR redevelopment plan

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There seems to be some detractors when it comes to what I have been saying about reducing the rail traffic downtown after we took possession of the RR redevelopment land. I will apologize on one level where I was wrong. First off, I was unaware that two tracks would remain under Munson’s plan and secondly that this was mostly about the redevelopment. Those two items did not change under Huether’s plan. But Munson did want the rail traffic to reduce, substantially under his 2005 plan;

Sioux Falls Mayor David Munson says, “For any development we want to do moving those tracks is very important.”

Plus, the mayor says moving the tracks is an issue of safety. Traffic wouldn’t be backed up nearly as much anymore. And if a train were to derail while carrying hazardous material, it wouldn’t happen in the center of a growing city.

Munson says, “We’ve seen recently trains that have leaked, they’ve had to evacuate areas so we’re trying to stay ahead of that here.”

Ironically, these hazardous train cars are still parked several days a week next to Nelson Park only hundreds of feet from the Sioux River on the South and a kid’s skate park and swimming pool to the North.

In fact the RR has stated that rail traffic would NOT be reduced under Huether’s plan. They have stated that the trains will become shorter BUT more frequent. They were not kidding. As I have noted they have become a lot more frequent over Cliff Avenue next to Avera Hospital during noon and rush hour times. One of the factors that I can see is instead of using the old switch yard that is gone now, they are re-hooking and switching train cars in the area just North of Avera’s employee/overflow parking lot. They are also parking a lot more train cars in that area.

Also, under Munson’s 2005 plan, Mark Cotter felt that rail traffic and switching would reduce so much they could eventually tear down the 10th street viaduct;

But getting the switching yard moved could dramatically reduce the size of the 10th Street viaduct in years to come. “Twenty-five years down the road, when the viaduct needs to be reconstructed, we can bring in dirt,” Cotter says, because the viaduct no longer would have to span an entire switching yard. “Roads are cheaper to repair than bridges,” Cotter says.

I wonder if that is still the plan to tear down the viaducts in 2030?

As you can see, the original vision did include the redevelopment of the banana land and leaving two RR tracks, BUT it also envisioned reducing rail traffic significantly throughout downtown which apparently was left out of Huether’s plan.

 

Posted in: Developers, Development, Downtown Sioux Falls, Mayor Grump Toad, Mayor High Crimes, Mayor Hubris, Mayor Pants on Fire, Mayor Subprime Mike Huether, Mike Huether, Munson, Railroads, Sioux Falls

Indoor aquatic center ‘Wall of Lies’

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wall-of-lies

I think Cameraman Bruce and I figured out why we were not invited as media to see the indoor pool before the public. They didn’t want us to see the ‘Wall of Lies’. I just hope taxpayers didn’t pay for this piece of propaganda.

Besides the fact that this hasn’t been discussed for 60 years, there are many claims on this mural that don’t add up. The first one (which I didn’t take a picture of) is that Nelson Park (Drake Springs) would have been the home of the first indoor pool (if that darn Theresa Stehly didn’t get involved) her name wasn’t mentioned on the article, but it was clear who they were trying to throw under the bus. The outdoor pool passed at that location of an almost 2/1 vote. Though Stehly didn’t know it at the time, it would have actually been a poor location for an indoor pool. An aquatic consultant later told the city that because of ground water issues at Nelson Park, building an indoor pool at that location would have caused major maintenance concerns. In hindsight, we should be thanking Stehly.

speller

The only one recommending the Spellerberg site was the mayor. The voters had no part in that decision. As for the convenient parking, you should have seen the zoo with traffic that was backed up both directions for at least a half a mile on Western Avenue tonight. Where will all these people park when there is a swim meet? Good question. I have often argued that the city should have partnered with Sanford at the Sports Complex for an indoor pool. Plenty of parking and room for expansion. We are literally land locked at Spellerberg, and with the expansion of the VA, expect parking issues for years to come. Eventually the city will have to take out more green space at the park to build a bigger parking lot.

debt-lie

Now let’s move on to the ‘advocational sessions’ and the pack of lies surrounding the outdoor pool vote. The public NEVER voted for an indoor pool, they simply rejected an outdoor pool, as I said, in a campaign paid for by taxpayers that had so many half truths in it, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. But I take issue with the crafty language the city used with the funding, ‘. . . which included no additional City debt,’. While that statement in itself is true, we basically turned a loan over for the levee bonds. When the Feds repaid us for that loan, instead of using the money to pay it off or using it for infrastructure, we turned the debt over to the pool. We still have to pay off those bonds, so this is essentially a white lie. There is still approximately $13 million of unpaid debt.

And lastly, the mayor couldn’t resist to get his name on wall in the building with one of his silly quotes;

ac-mayorquote

And the $1.5 million dollar a year subsidy we have to pay to run this place will warm everyone’s heart.

As I mentioned above, a better option would have been partnering with Sanford or even the school district on this project. If anything, the aquatic center is a failure of prudent vision in acquiring such a facility, and we will all be paying for that mistake for years to come.

Posted in: MIDCO Aquatic Center, Sioux Falls, Sioux Falls Parks and Rec