Entries Tagged 'Public Works' ↓

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While the city claims that it is legal for Zach to do this because of the 80% approval from the neighborhood, one has to question the liability of the city and and safety concerns of having a citizen buying his own paint and standing in a public street painting stripes?

It’s bad enough citizens risk their safety trimming city owned trees in the boulevard now they have citizens striping the streets, something public works and the traffic department should have paid for and contracted after Zach did the legwork of the approval process. Are we so destitute for money in the city we now are having citizens buying and painting city streets?

I guess the city recently re-striped North Main, somehow they were able to scrape the money together, but ironically it wasn’t to touch up the job Zach did. The city repainted the parallel parking spots taking away the angled parking Zach created. So I guess the city has money to stripe the streets when they are covering up citizen’s hard work.

The city’s chief traffic engineer claimed they decided to go back to parallel parking because the Bakery closed. Huh? I guess they don’t think the place is ever going to reopen. Let’s face it, the real reason they painted over Zach’s work was to cover up the embarrassment of having a citizen do their job for them. Lazy asses.

These cameras have been lining the lights on Minnesota Ave. Pretty scary;

Two different systems, one on Minnesota Avenue and another on 41^st Street, will go live this summer.

Troy Miller, traffic engineer with the city of Sioux Falls, says that two adaptive traffic systems will be activated in the coming months.  One will encompass eight intersections on Minnesota Avenue between Interstate 229 and 18^th Street; another will span 13 intersections on 41^stStreet between Marion Road and Minnesota Avenue.

The adaptive traffic systems control lights based on traffic. Miller says the systems identify traffic and make adjustments to shorten travel time.

I wonder how these cameras will hold up in a high wind storm? I also wonder what else they are ‘detecting’.

This morning, I was finally glad to merge on to the interstate on my way to work. It seemed the State DOT snow plow operators remembered to set their alarm clocks, I can’t say the same about the city.

Yes, I understand that the snow will probably be gone by 5 PM today, but would it have hurt anything to go out at about 5-6 AM this morning and plow the main arterials like Cliff, Minnesota, Marion and 41st Street with just one pass at least? The ridges down the middle of the road were so high, my car was hydro plaining at times, and the ridges were also holding back the water from flowing into storm gutters. A horrible mess that could have been corrected over a couple of hours by our Public Works Department.

I know money is tight, but it could not have cost that much to call in workers a couple of hours earlier to do a job they are already punched in to do on a normal Monday anyway.

Public Works Department; HUGE FAIL!

I was actually surprised at my rating of 72%, I thought it would be higher.

Check out your street rating.

Something I have been suspicious about a long time, picking favorites and winners and losers at city hall;

A Sioux Falls contractor says his company has been unfairly blacklisted from city building projects after a dispute over payment on an earlier project.

No other contractor currently carries the “non-responsible” designation.

Maybe the contractor could claim all of the bad things happened because of an ‘Act of God’. If the city can use it as an excuse for damaging personal property, why can’t a private contractor? What’s sad about this is the unlimited legal resources our city has to fight these kinds of things, with our money.

To bad we don’t have an administration like this in Sioux Falls that actually looks out for residents when city directors get a wild hair;

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler plans to quash an effort by city bureaucrats to quietly expand homeowners’ responsibilities to care for trees on city-owned land.

The proposed new rule would have required Portland property owners to cut down dangerous trees on city property adjacent to their land, even if the trees were located far from the private property.

A spokesman for Wheeler says he plans to pull the proposed rule and have city employees rewrite it before bringing it back to the City Council for a vote.

Notice how they tried to slip in the rule. Makes you wonder if that is how Project TRIM (tree tax) got started in Sioux Falls.

The city released a new video showing how snow gates are used. Listen to the full report here (DOC: snowgate-update )

The video below has Galen Huber explaining what is happening.

My only suggestion on this would be to put very large signs about 40 feet from the front doors of public facilities that says ‘NO SMOKING BEYOND THIS POINT’ with smoker posts (outdoor ashtrays) attached to them. The city already has a sign department that can make these signs very easily. But it seems like some people with the city cannot let this die;

“The intent is never to make this about the enforcement, the consequence of being caught, it’s really that education and creating that environment that is a healthy environment,” Michael stated.

Well then instead of making rules, laws and ordinances, do your job and EDUCATE!

Councilor Stehly offers her help when it comes to getting snow gate service properly;

I reached out to our Public Works Director Mark Cotter, and he assured me that his department is 100 percent committed to using snow gates citywide. We must understand that these gates are not meant to remove all the snow, but to help alleviate the majority of snow left behind.

Director Cotter and I would like to encourage you to reach out to us if there are problems with your service in the future. Councilor Theresa Stehly, 929-8783 and Public Works at 367-8255.

Let’s keep working together to keep Sioux Falls a great place for all people to live.

With a winter storm expected this next Friday, the phones should be busy.

There was something else in the letter I found interesting;

Snow gates are mandated to be used in all residential areas according to a voter approved city ordinance in 2014. Just as we have an ordinance requiring citizens to remove snow from their sidewalks, the city has an obligation to provide snow gate service.

Well, not really. As we found out this past week, the city legal team of crack attorneys at Sioux Falls city hall seem to have this policy of not putting those kind of things on the books, only when they want to harass you about doing something like scooping sidewalks or trimming trees (GAWD I HATE PROJECT TRIM). But it seems Sioux Falls may be the exception when a municipality doesn’t want to follow their own rules. In Bismarck, ND they actually take responsibility for laws passed by citizens;

Imagine that, when citizens actually pass an ordinance, the city’s legal team does the legal thing, put it on the books.

I have suggested that the city purposely doesn’t put the snow gates on the books in Sioux Falls so citizens can’t sue the city if they don’t use them. While that is clever, it is also very sneaky.

As you know, I am big on open government, and public notices are important;

A bill that would allow South Dakota’s 17 largest cities to publish their public notices such as meeting minutes online instead of in the local newspaper was defeated in committee on Thursday.

HB1167 would have allowed cities with populations of more than 5,000 to publish their public notices on their websites, freeing them from the current requirement that notices be published in the local newspaper.

Rep. Greg Jamison, R-Sioux Falls, the bill’s sponsor, said the state’s larger cities are already posting their notices online, as well as broadcasting the meetings.

HB1167 “makes it so it doesn’t have to be in the newspaper,” Jamison said. “That’s the big difference here.”

While I agree alternative methods should be ‘explored’ I do agree with the SD newspaper industry – to an extent;

Justin Smith, an SDNA lobbyist, said that having a third party print the notices ensures that the government “cannot come back later and change them.”

In his work as a lawyer, Smith said, he has at times needed to check on notices published as far back as the 1950s.

“There is forever a record of that information,” Smith said. “1167 would destroy this permanent archive.”

While their arguments are fine and dandy, the issue I have with the way it is now, is that it has to be in a ‘paid subscription paper’ and the problem with our local paper is that they print it on a weekday (not as many subscribers) and in 4-point type. It should really be in the Sunday Paper in at least 6-8 pt type so people don’t have to get out a magnifying glass. I also don’t see a problem with it being in a weekly shopper that doesn’t have subscribers, it may get MORE readership. Right now, the government entities are subject to when the newspapers decide to print the notices, and that isn’t right either. Just Sayin’.