Councilor Stehly gets it done without even voting

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As I have mentioned in the past, Councilor Stehly has gotten a lot of things done without the votes, but by just simply putting on pressure.

She did it again this afternoon at the Audit Committee Meeting.

She asked for several things from the podium during the 2020 Audit Plan presentation;

• An external audit of the Parking System (Theresa mentioned that she found it odd that the city wants to keep building or subsidizing parking ramps downtown yet wants to sell off flat parking lots).

• An audit of the CMAR (Construction Manager at Risk) process.

• Travel expenses of city staff (I guess that during the current administration, city directors and staff, and mostly the mayor, have been taking a lot of ‘junket trips’ but not really giving a report to the public as what they are doing on the trips. Recently TenHaken put up a short column about his trip to China, but never really told us what was really discussed. We also get a lot of updates on FB from the Innovation Manger and all the different cities he has been drinking in.

• A study of City Director salaries in comparison to other cities. Something I pointed out the last time the HR department did a wage study, but did NOT include city directors. How convenient.

The committee argued the merits of all the items. Councilor Brekke mentioned that maybe the city council budget analyst could look into the last two items and do a presentation on those findings – which I agree.

Audit Manager Nelson suggested that the CMAR audit would have to be done externally due to it’s speciality of the audit.

But they got into a long discussion about the external parking ramp audit. Councilor Kiley said he didn’t want to put it on the audit plan because they are in the middle of litigation, but other members argued that there was nothing wrong with putting it on the agenda, and if they have to pull it in the future, they can. The amendment to add it passed with Kiley and Chair Neitzert voting against it. Councilor Stehly doesn’t sit on the committee so she couldn’t vote on it.

T.J. TypeOver said they won’t audit it until it is done;

T.J. Nelson, deputy chief of staff in the mayor’s office, said City Hall isn’t opposed to a review of the parking system or the ramp, but not until the ramp project is complete and the dust settles on any lawsuits surrounding it.

“The administration will complete a comprehensive review of the process that led to the prior approval of this project by the Huether administration. This will take place following the ramp’s completion and resolution of any outstanding legal matters,” he said. “At this time, the administration supports a financial or construction audit consistent with the time frame outlined above.”

Yeah, after we have f’d up in every possible way we can, then we will tell the public how that f’k up occurred. WHAT!? Wouldn’t it be wise to figure that out BEFORE we move ahead with another developer or even litigation? Wouldn’t this help our case? Sometimes I wonder if putting money in a burn barrel would be a better way to spend money then paying city communication staff.

There was also a presentation on the Landfill Audit. There was a lot of problems going on out there where basically employees were not following procedures and not doing proper inspections. You can listen for yourself. My view is the city is missing out on a lot of landfill revenue due to the laziness of the employees. I think they were warned about these things in past audits. I think it is time to start handing our pink slips, then maybe they will get the picture.

Chair Neitzert mentions at the end they are going to start the process of hiring another staff auditor (which they do need). I wonder if this time they will actually put an employment ad in something besides Tidbits and the City Hall’s lunchroom?

PUBLIC TRANSIT MEETING

I still haven’t heard all the details of what happened, but I guess a committee member got a little irate about how the public is being left out of the decisions they are making. More to come.

Posted in: Audit, Greg Neitzert, Rick Kiley, SF City Council, Sioux Falls, Theresa Stehly

It’s back to the well and is the well is drying up?

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Guest Post by Bruce Danielson

Here we go again, let’s build up hysteria and then spend millions of dollars under the table, over the table and in closed back rooms but claim transparency. It’s now 2019 and let’s remember and discover what’s new in the city of Sioux Falls. We see the same things in every project of dubious or questionable value to the town.

Let’s review a few:

The City Center Administration Building had to be built because a planning department employee claimed he had pee running down his City Hall basement office wall.

An indoor swimming pool our town could not live without so it was built on land loaned to the City of Sioux Falls and could be repossessed by the real land owner, the Federal government at any time (and probably will once the VA expands some more).

An event center designed to suck every bit of money out of the community to the benefit of the construction and the out of town management companies. Then to top it all off, put it in a location guaranteed to NOT help the struggling locally owned businesses of Sioux Falls.

The different emergency for sewer and water infrastructure bonding of over $300 million dollars to benefit a set of special developers and to hide the disastrous City Center HVAC system mistakes.

The parking ramp that had to be built, even if it does bleed the Parking Enterprise fund down to nothing keeping us from having properly maintained streets to drive to the parking spots. To do this we saw illegal asbestos removal, a building collapsed, a man die, and a developer defaulting, what a trifecta all in the name of ___________ (you fill in the blank). Now we have to spend $1.5 million of 2nd penny infrastructure money to protect the building that should have never been built. WE have to protect our investment but whose head will roll because of this? By the way, where is the Parking Director Matt Nelson these days?

Now have you seen the strange looking new machine being hauled around town lately? (At the top of the page)

This recent Vermeer Grinder – Shredder purchase for $964,270 by the city is for use in grinding trees at the landfill and around Sioux Falls. Do you know what is wrong about this purchase? Sioux Falls has an agreement to have a private business do this for FREE. Hidden in plain sight (if you can find the Consent Agenda of the July 5th, 2019 Council meeting) is contract 19-4165. Our administration spent almost $1 million dollars of 2nd penny without any discussion. Not only do we take away money from the pothole budget, but we take work away from a private business who was doing the city’s shredding to undercut the limited market the business has developed.

Once again, a city of Sioux Falls administration, pretending to be legitimate, upstanding, honest, trustworthy (is it an “and” or an “or”) TRANSPARENT is screwing all of us and trying to hide the evidence.

It’s 2nd penny be damned, full steam ahead on bonding everything. Get ready for the next bonding project(s) that never were bonded before. This is to keep the bonding companies and their supporters happy. You even see it in the Charter Revision Commission this year. Now consider the new Southeast fire station, street projects (remember the 2nd penny was created so streets would NEVER be bonded), the new training center and more are going to be in the next go round of bonding coming to a city council near you. So say good bye to getting your potholes repaired. Expect to see your locally owned employer or your privately owned business going down with city hall’s wall pee as more of the city’s limited funds are taken over by the bonding companies, all for another edifice coming to you.

Posted in: Public Utilities, Public Works, SF City Council, Sioux Falls

Turd Polishing Sioux Falls City Council

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Just when you think the dysfunction with the council could not get much worse, they outdo themselves.

PARKING RAMP WILL BE GREAT SOMEDAY!

At the Budget meeting they had a presentation by Parking Director, Matt Nelson, who told the council that the bunker ramp will be great ‘someday’. Neitzert (who still thinks he did nothing wrong by voting for it) and Erickson agreed with Matt. I told them during public input that Nelson was polishing a turd.

I also told them I was frustrated that city staff was against starting some new programs. Police Chief Burns said that body cameras would basically cost to much and he would have to add staff. But hey, a $20-30 million dollar training center is ok. I told them that the cost would be worth it to protect officers and people who are arrested.

Planning Director Eckhoff also voiced concerns about starting a residential TIF program saying that remodeling houses doesn’t add much value. Oh, but million dollar condos have helped us out soooo much!

COUNCILOR SOEHL EMBARRASES HIMSELF

In a strange attempt to embarrass councilor Stehly with her SOS project resolution during the regular 7 PM meeting, without warning, Soehl guts her resolution by making the program voluntary. While I agree with a majority of the council we shouldn’t be using parking fines for charities, all the council had to do is just vote NO instead of gutting Stehly’s resolution (which they eventually did) once Starr challenged Soehl’s amendment for not properly noticing it. In Curt’s strange attempt to put Theresa in her place, he embarrassed himself by making a big deal out of a charity program. He looked like a class A, A-Hole.

AMENDMENTS TO THE LEGISLATIVE PRIORITIES HAVE NEVER BEEN CHALLENGED IN THE PAST

In an attempt to get back at Stehly and Starr for calling Soehl out on his little stunt, when they made amendments to the legislative priorities, they claimed they have not been properly noticed.

Huh?

The priorities have always been just ‘suggestions’ to the legislature. They are certainly not binding. If they made a 100 amendments it would not matter. Amendments have been made in the past. The city attorney, Kooistra really showed his lack of knowledge when it came to what should be noticed. Erickson actually came to the rescue by saying by deferring the priorities, the amendments now become proper notice. They deferred it for a week.

The crap coming out of Carnegie these days gets shinier by the day.

Posted in: SF City Council, Sioux Falls

UPDATE: Argus Leader ED board holds back important details in their attack on councilor Stehly

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It’s often easy to attack someone when you leave out the important parts.

UPDATE: After talking to a few folks about this editorial tonight, I think a better approach would have been to write the article about the dysfunction of the council as a whole. They all have their faults and strengths. Not one single councilor is to blame for the breakdown. While some are louder than others, sometimes inaction can be just as harmful as too much of it.

Ever since Mr. Myers took over the helm at the AL the place has been on a steady decline and it culminates in their attack on a city councilor. It’s funny how he has so many choice words for a person with a high level of integrity, like Stehly, but doesn’t have the courage to call out one of his key staffers or even fire them after they majorly screwed the pooch. And better yet, it didn’t even make the pages of his fine paper, worthy of a front page story, he just put the person back on their beat like nothing happened. Of course this person never committed a heinous crime like calling someone on a Saturday before Easter . . . the SHAME! The Shame!

I first want to apologize to city councilor Theresa Stehly, I feel bad she has to take the full weight of this diatribe even though she has had support from other city councilors and most importantly citizens on these issues. I’ve known Theresa long enough to know that she just doesn’t wake up in the morning and decide to be on the wrong side of an issue. She listens to her constituents and even reaches out to those with a differing opinion. I can’t say that about the rest of them. She’s an AT-LARGE elected representative of the citizens FIRST! The news media, developers and any other whiny ass, give me, give me, give me organizations in this town should be at the back of the line. The lion’s share of taxes and fees that fund this government come from the citizenry as a whole. We support this community through Federal income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes and ever increasing fees. She represents us more then any city councilor has since the council form of government was formed under the Home Rule Charter.

What makes the attack even more suspicious is it comes out just hours after the paper put up a story about the failing parking ramp. Another story Cameraman Bruce had to give the paper on a silver platter, just like the EC siding and the EC secret settlement. All along the way, it has taken us ‘unqualified’ journalists to light a fire under these paid ‘qualified’ journalists. I was actually laughing when recently Mr. Myers wrote about the SNAP suit and mentioned how hard the paper went after the EC secret settlement. He failed to mention that it took Bruce and I weeks to convince them that the settlement stunk, and they fought us along the way, yet now Myers is playing ‘We are the Champions’ on the headphones in his brain.

Why do I bring up the Parking Ramp? While councilor Starr did support Stehly on trying to stop the project, Theresa was the only one vocal enough to say this was a bad deal, many citizens agreed. So instead of praising Theresa for standing against this colossal f’k up, they write an editorial lambasting her about not voting for an unqualified candidate for the Internal Auditor.

But let’s review all the things Mr. Myers and his prestigious ED board left out to make a more compelling argument against Stehly;

Two days after the call, councilors Neitzert, Christine Erickson, Marshall Selberg and Rick Kiley issued a press release condemning Stehly’s automated call and rebutting her claims that the months-long hiring process was being “ramrodded” through.

It may have been a ‘months long’ hiring process (which it wasn’t), but magically after only 3 weeks of online ads and 15 unqualified applicants they decided to pick Mrs. Nelson instead going back to the drawing board. They also were so proud of the selection they posted it on the agenda without a BIO or background of Mrs. Nelson 4 days before a special council meeting over a holiday weekend. But, you know, that’s not ramrodding . . . WTF? It is also interesting that there has never been a stated reason why the last auditor left so quickly after being appointed and whether the administration is going to replace Mrs. Nelson. The three councilors had a very good reason to be skiddish.

Stehly accused Neitzert of calling her a liar.

Listen to the interview for yourself, Neitzert does call her a liar and being slanderous, an actual violation of the city council’s ethics code, but notice how the ED board twists it. Not only was it an ethics violation, it was also untrue. Nelson’s husband was one of the players behind the VERY controversial parking ramp (as we are finding out) Shana has NO experience as an internal auditor or supervisor and has several conflicts. Please, identify these ‘LIES’ for us. NO one in the media or on the majority of the council has been able to prove what Stehly was saying was a lie(s).

As pointed out in the editorial, the city council has been dysfunctional, and it started way before councilor Stehly came aboard, she has just shined a light on the dysfunction of the rubber stampers and the big wheels that fund their campaigns and it has them really pissed off, and now they apparently have the ear of the ED board.

I told Theresa to wear this as a badge of honor, it must have been a slow week at the paper to have to attack an individual like this. Apparently Bruce and I need to step up our game and give them more things to investigate.

Posted in: Sioux Falls

An Open Letter to Sioux Falls City Councilor Greg Neitzert

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Over the past year there has been many things said by our esteemed councilor at public council meetings, on Facebook and in the media. It all culminated last week with the special meeting to hire our new internal audit manager and a discussion on the Greg Belfrage show between councilors Stehly and Neitzert in which Neitzert called Stehly a bully and a ‘LIAR’ he also inferred that councilor Starr was a liar to (which is actually a violation of council ethics).

While this was all going on Neitzert kept trying to say that the character of the new city council employee was being questioned, assassinated and denigrated. I still don’t know what he is talking about. In fact if you watch the council meeting or listen to anyone talk about her in the meeting, NOBODY questions her character only her qualifications. Some even state they are NOT questioning her character. If you are questioning someone’s qualifications for a job, that is NOT questioning their character – those two things are polar opposites.

So here are the FACTS that Councilor Neitzert claims people are ‘Lying’ about;

• Nobody on the City Council or during public input questioned Mrs. Nelson’s character. (I can’t speak to random comments on FB)

• While Mrs. Nelson has extensive financial and business experience (12 years) she has NO internal audit experience or supervisor experience.

• Mrs. Nelson has broad conflicts of interest with the city, not just with her husband as a director, but with the finance department she currently works in and a very close family friendly relationship with one of the sitting city councilors.

• Mrs. Nelson was warned in advance (before her nomination was publicly noticed) that the city council wasn’t in full consensus of her employment. She knew there would be a high level of scrutiny. This of course is NOT Mrs. Nelson’s fault, this ‘doubt’ was caused because of a poorly executed hiring process by councilor Neitzert. She still chose to move forward knowing it would be a contentious debate.

• Councilor Neitzert denies he ramrodded the process. He says that most if NOT all resolutions are noticed on a Friday and Voted on a Tuesday. While there is a lot of truth to that, most resolutions are benign, and have full support of the city council. They include things like gifting old equipment to other communities, appointing city board members, allowing SculptureWalk, giving out awards, etc. They don’t usually involve hiring a city council manager of this importance. They also are NEVER brought forward in a special meeting that has a singular objective (ex; golf contract). It was noticed on a Holiday Weekend, with NO attached documents that explained who Mrs. Nelson was or why she was qualified. It was also during a special meeting at 5:30 PM the following Tuesday. Her appointment could have easily been postponed for several weeks so the public could vet her. Just the day after her appointment Neitzert said it would be a full month before she transitioned into her position. So what was the rush? Councilor Stehly had NO choice but to put out a robo-call to inform the public this was coming down the pipe – FAST. While you may have had issues with her verbiage and tone, she did NOTHING wrong, or made false statements. It was ‘ramrodded’ and the parking ramp debacle was ‘controversial’.

• The city’s legal team blew off the nepotism and conflict of interest concerns as being ‘legal’ and since they were legal, in their eyes there were no problems. South Dakota has an ‘F’ rating in government corruption, mostly because we have NO ethics, conflict of interest or nepotism laws (or very weak ones).

• Mayor TenHaken never said whether Mrs. Nelson would be missed or even replaced (this would have been nice to know during a longer vetting process). You would think an employee with this much experience in finance, a person who implemented key finance software, and an employee who won an award (from the past mayor) would be valued by the administration and asked to stay. (I’m hearing from my city hall moles that there was a discussion about it, but since it was a personnel issue, and Mrs. Nelson would be bettering her career, they just let her proceed. If all this happened, I’m not sure why any of that is confidential and couldn’t be shared at the special meeting by the HR department).

• Councilor Neitzert said since he had 6 councilors sign off on her nomination he didn’t feel the need to get a total consensus. Though, during the meeting, councilor Brekke pointed out that most city council employees have a consensus of the entire council before getting approved. In fact, in the 13+ years I have been blogging about the city, the last time I can remember there was NO consensus of the city council was when they voted to terminate City Clerk Owen, and that discussion was behind closed doors with a public vote.

• After 3 weeks of job employment ads mostly online without the assistance of a job recruitment agency, the city got 15 candidates in which NONE of them had audit experience and only ONE of them was a current city employee, with an obvious conflict, and she was chosen. Some people call that ‘inside baseball’ but I won’t speculate any further.

Councilor Brekke suggested to Councilor Neitzert (who is the audit chair) that a broader search be done to find someone with audit experience. Her request was either ignored or rejected.

Councilor Starr, who was part of the hiring committee suggested early on that they hire a recruiter. They said it would cost too much, though Starr pointed out you could get one as low as $5K, and in most cases you don’t pay unless they produce qualified candidates. In other words, no harm, no foul. His suggestion was also discarded.

I think ‘the fix was in’ as soon as Mrs. Nelson turned in her application, and there was no going back from there. Just listen to what Neitzert said on Belfrage, ‘Shana is a Rock Star!’ Great, but why not do a broader search for a qualified ‘Rock Star’? And why totally ignore the suggestions of your fellow councilors? Who is the bully?

While I could care less if Councilor Neitzert wants to act like a Crazed Man-Child in the media, I am truly asking him to stop calling his fellow councilors liars, bullies, self-appointed victims and disrespecting and ignoring their opinions. If you disagree, you simply state that, and move on. If they have good suggestions about the hiring process, you try them. It’s really that simple.

As I have pointed out above, there is only one reason why this process when to Sh*t, and that person needs to take a hard look into the mirror. The only one who truly let down Mrs. Nelson through this process was the one leading the process, City Councilor & Audit Chair, Greg Neitzert.

Posted in: Audit, Greg Neitzert, SF City Council, Sioux Falls