Sioux Falls City Council acts like food fighting toddlers

City Council Vice-Chair and Leader of the RS5, Greg ‘Man-Child’ Neitzert basically said this during the city council open discussion at the informational meeting after Councilor Brekke offered her disappointment in NOT being allowed to make a presentation to the super secret operations committee.

First off, Brekke made the point that ANY city councilor that is fairly elected to the council should have the opportunity to make a presentation to the full council.

Janet’s presentation is about the phone texting ban (basically) during the meetings. She was simply asking for input before putting it as a 1st reading. The chair of the ops committee (that hasn’t probably met in over a year) Neitzert said he consulted the other members and decided he would refuse Janet’s request. First off, that is a flat out lie. Councilor Starr is on the committee and he said he was never asked. Secondly, I’m not even sure they can deny a fellow city councilor an opportunity to make a presentation about anything, and thirdly, I think the meetings should be in public.

That didn’t stop councilor Christine AirBNBrickson from making all kinds of excuses from scheduling conflicts, time limits (which by charter don’t exist) to whether this could be a public meeting.

And while Greg had the audacity to say the council was acting like toddlers (I think Brekke was very professional and kept her cool) HE was the one that acted like the big baby in refusing to allow Janet the opportunity to make the presentation. Kettle meet black.

FINANCIAL DIRECTOR TRIES TO SPLIT HAIRS

Also during the informational, financial director, Shawn Pritchett tells councilor Stehly that water rates are NOT going up but sewer is. I was wondering if Shawn knew that we don’t get separate water/sewer bills and that they are tied into one bill? In other words, your water & sewer is going up, no matter how he wants to spin it. He also said we already made a bond payment on the Bunker ramp. The payments will be between $1.5-1.7 Million per year for the next 15 years.

PRESIDENT OF THE TEA DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION . . . UH . . . I MEAN, SF HOUSING DIRECTOR CHELLAC UNRUH GIVES A CONFUSING PRESENTATION

Unruh basically says we will continue to bail out the poorest of the poor making sure developers are making a buck along the way while taxpayers are definitely not maximizing their investment. Same program, different person.

While there were some differences, I didn’t see any major changes. Like stopping global warming, we are beyond a simple fix for affordable housing solutions, but I do think the city could use a 4-tier approach, or a combination of any of these things to get a handle on it. I suggest we start in four different core neighborhoods for a pilot program.

1. You start with fixing curb and gutter, parking strips, sidewalks, streets and lighting (this would be no out of pocket costs to homeowners and apartment owners in these neighborhoods)
2. You look for Federal Grants that can help with EPA cleanup requirements like lead paint or mold remediation.
3. For those that qualify you use community development loans for minor repairs to windows, roofs, furnaces etc. These loans are often low interest to no interest. There are options to be on a payment program or pay off the loan when or if you sell the home in the future.
4. Probably with a change to state law, we start applying TIF rebates to larger fixes and remodels, like adding bedrooms, fixing basements, etc. to single family homes.

I think the fixes are there, and if you break it down into different programs, the neighborhoods have options.

LEGISLATIVE PRIORITIES – DUMP OUR LOCAL PAPER

In one of the council’s priorities, they suggested alternative publishing options for public notices. During public input, I suggested putting them online (which I think they are already) and ditch the newspaper (which basically takes about $70K a year from taxpayers to print the notices in 4 PT type on a Monday or Saturday issue that no one reads). I also suggested for those who don’t have the internet, to have printed copies of the notices at all the public libraries, Carnegie and City Hall. The city has it’s own media/digital department. It would cost them very little to provide printed copies at the libraries. Of course, this will have to change in the state legislature. I think they could simplify the law by giving municipalities carte blanche on how they want handle public notices.