South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

Paul Ten Haken Sioux Falls

UPDATE: Hey, Mayor TenHaken, there are poor kids in Sioux Falls to

l3wis 12Comments

While I commend PTH for wanting to do charity work half-way across the world, he should look in his backyard;

He may now be Mayor, but that’s not stopping TenHaken from making his annual trip to help those in need in a Haitian city called Ti Riviere.

“This is how I’m going to spend a week of vacation every year. This is not a city junket. This is not a political trip. This is me needing to go to Haiti to recharge my batteries and get some perspective each year,” TenHaken said.

Just look at our school system, half of the students are on FREE and reduced lunches. Some of the schools in the poorer neighborhoods are around 90%. Recently a study determined that a neighborhood by North Cliff is a food dessert. The Banquet is expanding to the Westside of the city. Week after week a concerned citizen shows up to the city council meeting and begs the mayor to open a temporary shelter for those who get turned away at the other ‘god-fearing’ joints. There is county a few hundred miles from here on the reservation that is considered the poorest in the nation. If PTH wants to help the poor, he just needs to look out the backdoor of city hall. With our low wage work environment, he will find plenty who need help.

UPDATE: I also find it a bit ironic that PTH mentions this was NOT a junket but he paid for it himself. Did you know Sioux Falls mayors have unlimited vacation time? And I guess PTH has been maxing that fringe benefit quite a bit. This is why he had to allow COS Beck to be part-time mayor in his absence.

But it gets even better, I guess Public Works director Cotter went along for the ride to study ‘infrastructure’. No offense, but wouldn’t you be studying the ‘LACK’ of infrastructure? Also if this was a ‘fact finding’ mission for Cotter, did the taxpayers of Sioux Falls pay for it? Did PTH pay his way? As I understand it, this is missionary work, and the fine line between government and religion could have been crossed. But I think the pressing question is, ‘Who in their right mind would take a vacation with their boss, to an undeveloped country, to read the bible to the natives?’

Erica Beck Planning Commission Sioux Falls

City of Sioux Falls claims they will be doing a national search for new planning director

l3wis 6Comments

While I believe they are conducting a national search, I wonder how that will really turnout?

With Cooper retiring in April, the city has started a nationwide search for his replacement.

“To maintain the growth we’ve had in the city and to keep that moving forward, this position is responsible for that, so for all intents and purposes, it’s one of our biggest positions,” Mayor Paul TenHaken said.

I have maintained for awhile that if you bring in a new planning director from out of state they will not have the historical knowledge of how planning and development is done in Sioux Falls. As we know, developers and the hospitals run the town, they pretty much admitted that during the Citizens Planning Academy when a citizen asked why Sanford and the other big developers get what they want. Those with the most money win!

I think the new position will be a Co-Director position that will manage the department, but I think the new director will have to answer to a higher power who has the historical knowledge. I think the department will ultimately be managed by COS Beck.

Media

Hopefully this Bill will be amended on the floor

l3wis 3Comments

So this bill is moving forward;

A bill seeking to protect journalists and their sources of information passed out of committee this morning Pierre.

Members of the House Judiciary Committee advanced House Bill 1074 by a unanimous vote.

Reporter Shield Laws have become common across the United States but South Dakota has lagged behind in adopting reporter privilege as law.  That from proponents who testified on behalf of the bill.

It fails to recognize ‘bloggers’ as journalists even though countless judges have determined them as journalists (I have qualified as press when I covered the Sanders and Clinton campaigns and got the same treatment as TV and newspaper journalists);

What is not included in HB1074 is a provision for bloggers and other social media based operations not affiliated with credentialed news sources, publications, or call letter broadcast stations.

As I have said in the past, I sell advertising on my site, so I do get paid. I have also pointed out the major newspapers and TV stations across the state could not survive without their internet revenue. Most people get their news from the internet. I would also argue that many major news stories get their start on the blogs. The local stations pluck story ideas from my site all of the time. The EC siding settlement would have never occurred if Bruce and I didn’t make a stink about it. This law should be amended to include bloggers.

County Commission Minnehaha County Planning Commission SF City Council Sioux Falls

Another Funeral, uh I mean, Wedding Barn

l3wis 2Comments

Here we go again (Presentation at the beginning of meeting above) another Wedding Barn. This one is near the new Veterans Cemetery. I guess quite a few neighbors showed up to say they didn’t want it there (Joint jurisdiction with the county and city even though those opposing the barn do NOT live in city limits).

One of the reasons is noise from bands, and the fact it is a heavily traveled gravel road already and people are wondering who will pave it and pay the cost. One of the biggest complaints the neighbors had was that they were never notified or asked if they wanted to live next to a cemetery (they were not notified of the re-zone from ag land) and they were pretty perturbed that the cemetery is going in so close to their residences. I guess when the city wants to rezone they don’t have to get permission from the county, but it seems it is the other way around when the county wants to rezone.

While I wasn’t opposed to the cemetery I still think the Feds or the State should have paid the good taxpayers of Sioux Falls for the land.

Downtown Sioux Falls Greg Neitzert SF City Council Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls City Councilor Neitzert’s unfinished business

l3wis 7Comments

Last night during the City Council meeting there were quite a few accolades going towards Greg for his work on updating the Audit Committee ordinance. I would agree, he has put a lot of time into it.

But over the past year Greg has failed to follow through with a number of things he had told me at one time he was ‘working on’ only to find out from other councilors he dropped the issues.

The first one was overturning Rolfing and Erpenbach’s horrible ordinance that would require runoffs in council races. As I understand it another councilor took up that and it will be coming soon to repeal the ordinance and move it back to getting a plurality (34%).

The other was Downtown noise ordinance changes and a possible study. I haven’t heard a peep about this for well over 6 months. It is pretty obvious to most that the Downtown noise levels are a lot higher then the rest of the city (just with the trains alone). This seriously needs to be looked at with more development downtown and the Levitt Shell going in.

So why has Neitzert dropped the ball on these things? I’m not sure, but I have a feeling a few ‘elites’ in the Downtown development community got to him. Not sure why he backed off of Rolfing’s horrible ordinance.

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