SF City Council

1st Amendment Mayor TenHaken SF City Council Sioux Falls

One the funniest starts to a Sioux Falls City Council meeting

l3wis September 9, 2025 3Comments

Poops was a comedian tonight, though I don’t think he realized it. After the invocation (in which a pastor did a nice job of speaking about immigrants) Paul read a NEW statement about public input (Let’s call it the Sierra rule);

The city has an interest in maintaining civility and decorum during the public comment sessions of its meetings and has adopted rules to achieve the dual goals of ensuring the efficient conduct of the people’s business and fostering citizen participation in that discussion, part of these rules require any presenter from making any personal, pertinent or slanderous remarks which include making any personal attacks on any previous presenters.

Why do politicians always confuse the 1st Amendment with the 2nd Amendment? The 2nd Amendment is the only Amendment you can regulate (it’s in the language), not so much with the 1st. he cannot control what anyone says, that is a violation of their constitutional rights. As for slander or libel, that is ON the person standing at the podium. If they say something that is libelous about a city employee, the city can sue that individual. If they something libelous about another constituent, that person can sue them. It is NOT on this body if someone says something libelous at the podium, it is ON the constituent. And further more how can you predetermine if what is said is true or not? I see all kinds of lies coming from the podium, but sometimes it is hard to distinguish (mostly occurs when directors are at the podium). You can put policies in place until you are blue in the face, the 1st Amendment remains unchanged, and conservative and liberal judges have agreed since it was put on paper.

There were also two incidents in recent weeks of 1st Amendment violations in SD. A person at a Pennington County Commission meeting and a person at a Canton City Council meeting were threatened with removal and arrest. The citizens fought back. At the commission meeting, the constituent even threatened to do a citizens arrest of the chair for violating Federal law 🙂

We need to knock this crap off. With a wannabe dictator in DC, this is NO time for local governments to be squashing FREE speech, quite the opposite.

I have made it a priority to tell ALL mayoral candidates that I will be up their asses if they don’t embrace transparency and open the books when they become mayor.

1st Amendment Property Taxes SF City Council

The City of Sioux Falls Finance Director is a real FIREBALL

l3wis September 4, 2025 0Comments

After the Finance Director, Shawn ‘Fireball’ Pritchett put on his best performance to date to the city council Tuesday night supporting a property tax increase, some councilors were not buying it.

Why?

Well, because it’s strange that Fireball budgeted in the tax increase for 2026 before the council even approved it. I have no doubt the city council will pass this, either with 5-6 votes or a 4/4 tie with the mayor approving it. But what if the council votes this tax increase down? Then what? Well, the finance director would have to adjust the budget.

It is the council’s job to control the budget, and by charter they really are the ones supposed to be compiling it. So how does Fireball get away with budgeting for an assumed tax increase BEFORE the council approves that increase? Cart before horse. Reminds me of the Riverline promotion without a revenue source to pay for it. I guess I would have found the revenue first before pushing this forward. I would vote against this increase so Fireball has to do his job and actually put a budget together that focuses on fiscal restraint and not ‘assumed’ increases. I can’t believe we have 10 more months of this crap.

CITY NEEDS TO LIVESTREAM ALL PUBLIC MEETINGS ON YOUTUBE

The city’s agenda page is STILL broken after almost 16 years, just last night while watching the planning meeting it was screwing up. I sent this email to the entire city council, we will see what they do. I have been requesting this for several years with NO results;

Hello,

Trust me, with conversations with councilors current and past, I get your frustration with the video system on the city website, it started failing as Munson was leaving office and has never really been fixed since, and it appears it is getting worse. Several meetings over the past month have had video glitches. There is something you can do for a temporary/permanent fix. I would suggest keeping the current system so people can follow along the agenda, but for those who are only listening or watching the meetings they can also stream in YouTube. The benefit of the stream is it is FREE, in fact if you would put ALL of our public meetings on YouTube you would probably generate ad revenue from it. Also, almost every single local government in South Dakota uses YT to stream meetings, including the 2 local commissions and school board. The benefit is you can rewind the meeting at any time if you missed a speaker and the meeting is available for review IMMEDIATELY after the meeting ends. This is way past due. Now, I would assume that since the media department reports to the Mayor it is in his wheelhouse to get this fixed, but council meetings are under your review. My suggestion would be to pass an ordinance that requires the media department to live stream ALL public meetings. I would also give them 60 days to implement the YT stream in case they have to upgrade equipment or do some training (I learned how to make a YT video in 20 minutes). I also stress this needs to be in CHARTER, no handshake deals that get forgotten about in the next administration, I would even go a step farther and see if a council staffer can manage this and not even involve the media department.

As I said, way past due, and you can force the hand of the administration to comply by passing an ordinance. See, government can be easy sometimes, it only took 16 years.

Scott

Dr. Sarah Cole Elections SF City Council Sioux Falls Uncategorized

Why are local politicians recruiting replacements?

l3wis September 3, 2025 4Comments

We saw it this past time around in the school board election where an outgoing board member recruited a replacement.

Now Sioux Falls city councilor Cole is chairing the campaign of an At-Large council candidate that wants to replace her. It doesn’t really matter who he is because he will NOT be getting my vote. I will spread the news about this unethical behavior.

• Councilor Cole is NOT running for re-election, in other words she is quitting but wants to make sure she can pick a replacement.

• This is highly unethical and not sure why local yocals are doing this lately (Poops was precedent on this).

• As a highly skilled medical doctor, Cole should know this is unethical behavior.

Guess who decides who will serve us on the council? THE VOTERS!

While it is certainly NOT unethical to advise this candidate or even volunteer for his campaign, recruiting him, endorsing him publicly and chairing his campaign isn’t right.

I hope Sux wakes up before the next election and start looking at candidates for who they are ETHICALLY instead who racks up the most donations and endorsements.

I also heard another candidate running for council MAY HAVE put down a false address. I will investigate and update (from what I found so far, he lives at the address listed on his campaign finance forms.

1st Amendment Property Taxes SF City Council Sioux Falls Taxes

Will the Sioux Falls City Council raise property taxes today?

l3wis September 2, 2025 5Comments

(Item #53 – 1st Reading)

The city council is set to increase property taxes tonight by 2.9% which is allowable by state law, but look how the city is ‘twisting’ this ‘option’;

This ordinance shows the 2026 budget for the Governmental (tax supported) Funds for calendar year of 2026, and the required revenues and sources to support the expenses.

In other words they created the 2026 budget assuming the city council will pass the property tax increase. So what if they don’t? That means the finance department would have to adjust the budget, which is what GOOD GOVERNMENTS do. The city council doesn’t have to pass this tonight and have NO requirements by city or state law to pass a property tax increase. ZILCH. Not to mention with the way the economy is going right now it would be one of the WORST times to increase property taxes.

How the city council votes on this will show the true colors of the individual councilors. While 99% of the community is hollering to lower our property taxes it will be interesting to see which councilors are ignorant enough to support this increase. I have no doubt it will pass, it always does with usually 2 dissenters but I have a feeling the vote is going to go a little different this time, but if 4/4 occurs Mayor Lame Poop will break the tie to increase taxes. He has never cared about the little man and he ain’t going to start now. I hope it goes to a tie vote so he owns this tax increase.

I will also be curious to see if these folks who show up to every county commission meeting to bitch about property taxes will come to the council meeting for a good reaming. This is 1st reading, so I don’t expect to many comments, but hopefully at least 5 councilors will look in the mirror before entering the dais and shoot this down tonight so it never makes a 2nd reading.

1st Amendment County Commission Downtown Sioux Falls Libertarian Minnehaha County SF City Council Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Parks and Rec

Update: This is how Sux spends your tax dollars

l3wis August 28, 2025 3Comments

Update: I guess there was a HS cross country event at Paisley park today, so why can’t they run on unmulched grass? The Romans used to run races barefoot. So now I guess we fund HS sports thru parks tax dollars.

FIRST, THE POSITIVE: The Sioux Falls city council and Minnehaha County Commission restored 2026 funding for the Siouxland Librairies at their joint meeting today. Guess how much the mayor was cutting? A whopping $250K!!!! Yeah, a lot of coin for us mouth breathers but NOTHING to the city when you consider they have $80 Million in reserves (they are only required by ordinance to have about $50 Million cash on hand), but Poops has been stowing away money for his wet dream convention center). I was glad to see funding restored since all Poops cut was temp help wages.

I find it ironic that the mayor insists on nickel and diming citizen services while blowing MILLIONS on projects no one asked for (Sanford Wellness purchase and Jacobsen Plaza for example).

NOW FOR THE NEGATIVE: As I was commuting to work I decided to take the bike trail today and as I was riding thru Paisley Park I noticed the lawn had been freshly mowed. There were windrows (these are the piles of un-mulched grass that accumulate in ROWS) in the lawn. It was visible but NOT thick and would easily just disintegrate into the un-mowed grass with the next rain. So what did the Parks Department decide to do about these windrows? So there is this guy who drives down the bike trail with a tractor and a small blower he tows behind and he blows debris off of the trail. It’s a nice amenity and I appreciate it, just like the plowing of the trail in the winter. So this guy wasn’t blowing off the trail he was driving back and forth, North to South in the lawn blowing the windrows towards the East fence. My guess this would have taken at least 3-4 hours. So when the mayor talks about cutting essential services, maybe we need to cut the Parks budget, because apparently they have too much money to spend if they have a parks employee blowing grass around our parks (well, at least he was actually working unlike the parks worker who waters trees while reading a novel).

Also at the joint meeting tonight if you FF to the end where there is public input, it is worth the watch. A woman came up, and very politely and professionally addressed them about property taxes, and she read them the riot act. It was amazing. She needs to come back to the city council meeting and do the same speech since the city’s TIFilicious desires are raising our taxes. She also recommended that TIFs and OPT-OUTS should only be approved by voters. DAMN TOOTIN! She was cut off by Dean Karsky (him and Beninga need to retire) because she called out Commissioner Joe Kipley personally* (you know, Mr. Conflict of Interest double dipping from taxpayers) and a comment he had made, and it was a doozy.

To be honest with you, public input really doesn’t matter anymore you might as well be talking to a floating turd in your toilet, you would get more of a response. The County, the Council and the School Board all have their votes in line and mind made up before they walk into that meeting, no amount of pleading or shaming will get them to change their votes. There have been on occasion a councilor will change on the fly, but not because of testimony. I felt sorry for the folks over the last few weeks who have shown up to speak for the first time about important issues like deportation and the homelessness only to get patronized by the mayor. Deaf ears folks.

*The council and commission have a rule(?) at their meetings that no one at the podium can call out elected officials or public employees by name or individually. Let’s just say it is a contrived rule probably in Roberts, but as far as the 1st Amendment is concerned, you can call out anyone you want to at the podium and all they can do is cry.

One the funniest starts to a Sioux Falls City Council meeting

The City of Sioux Falls Finance Director is a real FIREBALL

Why are local politicians recruiting replacements?

Will the Sioux Falls City Council raise property taxes today?

Update: This is how Sux spends your tax dollars

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