I just shake my head when I see these kind of conflicts. The taxpayers of Sioux Falls are paying Unruh’s salary so she can represent it’s citizens in helping with more affordable housing in SIOUX FALLS while serving as the President of Tea’s Development Board.

I don’t have an issue with her serving in either position, but she needs to pick one or the other.

C’mon Paul! This isn’t Rocket Science, it’s ethics, and this one is easy.

Taxpayers, get ready to get bent over the barrel, this is going to cost us. This project will be getting not only State and Federal money, but also money from Tea, Lincoln County and Sioux Falls. Tea has already raised taxes in order to save up for this. I guess I really struggle with growth for growth sakes, especially when the core of our city needs a major re-hab and more density. Do we really need another retail center or could we diversify our core? More money dumped into developers who want to turn up cornfields and swamp land instead of investing in our core.

While she has no problem with driving to Sioux Falls to draw her paycheck from Sioux Falls taxpayers she encourages residents of TEA to not shop in Sioux Falls or use their services.

It still baffles me that we hired a Tea resident to run our housing division, and also allowed her to run for Tea City Council. But her comments about her civic pride in Tea says a lot about what she thinks of her employer, the City of Sioux Falls.

Chellee appeared on Inside Town Hall in November when she was still working for SE Tech,

She posted this image of her on the show on her campaign FB page;

She is bragging about working with SIOUX FALLS city councilors to get some pork for SE Tech (a place that is funded through our property taxes and sales taxes to the state), which has nothing to do with Tea and now that she works for the City of Sioux Falls, she will have to work with councilors, which brings us to why this is a conflict.

I’m not sure if any campaign rules were broken with this post, but I still would like to see an ethics question posed by the administration as to whether it is ethical for her to run for Tea City Council. I guess they are too busy trying to defend closed door meetings.

I do stand corrected on one level. I guess an employee of the Siouxland Libraries and an employee of the Siouxland Museums serve on city councils outside of Sioux Falls. But in some ways that is a little different. Both of those bodies are funded by the county and city(s).

But I have to wonder about the conflict of interest with a Tea resident as our housing director saying this about Tea and her run for council;

This is the most important quote from the article I posted yesterday.
“The advantages that suburbs have for adapting to disruptive innovation should not be a rationale for their complacency. Adaptation needs to be nurtured; it won’t happen automatically. Suburbs have an opportunity and, more importantly, an obligation to develop proofs of concept and to share those lessons with other governmental entities.”

If Tea is just a part of Sioux Falls, why do they have a city council? Why doesn’t Sioux Falls just annex Tea into our city limits? Seems we would solve a lot of problems for both communities. But the quote also makes you wonder who Chellee will be working for? The opportunities of a suburb of Sioux Falls, or her real paying gig with the City of Sioux Falls? How can you promote development and economic growth for Tea (while living there) and promote affordable housing in Sioux Falls at your day job? While I have had problems trying to find a specific rule or law that prohibits Unruh from doing both jobs, it’s still ethically questionable. Should the SF Ethics Commission be looking into this and ruling on it before the April election in Tea? I think so. I also find it a bit ironic that her family has chosen to live in Tea. Is it because housing is more affordable there?

I also find it curious she lists her employment with Sioux Falls as of February, yet no one saw her working at her new job until the beginning of March. So it seems she was well aware of her employment with the city when she announced she was running for Tea city council. Did her new employer know? If so, why isn’t Mayor TenHaken asking the Ethics Commission to look into this? Maybe they see Unruh as a double agent as an advantage to Sioux Falls?