February 2014

And they say DT Sioux Falls is unsafe

l3wis February 24, 2014 19Comments

While the rumor mills continue (mostly due to the Mayor using it as a campaign issue) that downtown is unsafe, where have most of the vehicle relatedÂ fatalities and injuries occurred in this town?

The man responsible for a fiery crash on Friday afternoon is facing several charges. Police say 23-year-old Adam Lind is charged with reckless driving, no proof of insurance, driving with a revoked and suspended license and driving an unlicensed vehicle. Lind was driving his 2001 Corvette Z06 on 57th Street Friday when he crashed into another vehicle, hit a traffic light and fence, before the car caught fire.

Most of these accidents occur on the outer parts of the city, south of 41st, including many pedestrians and bicyclists being injured or killed. Maybe instead of worrying about homeless people trying on clothes at the Man Code to warm themselves, we need to focus on more traffic safety on the Southside. But hey, there won’t be any issues with traffic at a new SE Walmart and even there is and a couple of kids get run over walking home from school, at least we created 250 jobs!

Mayor Hubris Mayor Subprime Mike Huether Mike Huether

UPDATED: Huether’s 4 Legs of City Government

l3wis February 24, 2014 10Comments

I guess Huether was explaining his four legs of government today during the listening and learning session at the Rollin’ Pin, and he was using a chair to demonstrate it.

I have a guest post coming from someone in attendance. I guess the person taking the photo, really had him on his toes.

UPDATE: If you have been to Learning and Listening sessions over the past few years of our Mayor’s tenure you get used to him being excitable. This past Saturday at the Rollin’ Pin was no different. I decided to attend this meeting because it was advertised on the City’s website as an official event. Official city events cannot be confused as campaign events. So I decided to take a few notes. The mayor knows me because I presented the Citizens for Integrity petition to the Tuesday night council meeting. As the event began, he spent a lot of time staring at me as I took notes.

Our new petition effort was organized because we have a city government led by a salesman. This mayor leads by selling, non-stop, all the time, everywhere. With an audience of about 40 members in place, the mayor began with inviting us to tour the Event Center this Saturday and Sunday. If you can’t make it this weekend, it will be every weekend through March. As if we did not know this after the mass mailing campaign piece in our water billsâ€¦

Now the mayor was on a roll, hitting the high points of his mayoral successes of fixing roads, cash flow, and of course the EC. He approached the group of retired senior citizens to encourage them to get back into the workforce. You know the â€˜active generation’ members make good employees or is it slaves?

The mayor decided to entertain us. He picked up a chair, flipped it over and proceeded to tell us of his version of successful work as mayor. Â We received a demonstration of management and economy or something using the upside down chair. Weird. And the group was puzzled. We once again learned he didn’t know anything about Costco before they showed up. Wow, a â€˜successful’ salesman with no knowledge of Costco, one of the most successful retailers in all the world, paying living wages? Hummmmâ€¦.

He decided to talk about the ballot issues. We got to see how snowgates work during his walking arm chopping demonstration. Twice. After a few more comments about the use of snowgates, he proceeded to blame the snowgate petition / ballot effort for his delay in implementing them. Yea right, we messed up his reelection campaign.

Next we heard about how Sioux Falls deserved an indoor pool and how in his opinion an outdoor ballot effort was wrong. A retired woman who admitted she did not plan to use the pool but since Sioux Falls has heard about an indoor pool for a long time, â€˜we’ deserve it. This got the mayor really fired up. Another member of the audience had been to an fitness center indoor pool on Saturday morning and there were a lot of users of the pool. This in his mind justified the city building an indoor pool. Now the mayor was excited appearing to realize he was in a â€˜friendly crowd. Mike now recited the need for an indoor pool and began to â€˜educate’ us. He let us know he did not agree with the outdoor pool and began to tell us why. He told us Don Kearney and Jeff Schmidt will be starting a series of education sessions this week, please read the City’s Webpage for dates and times. (Lest we forget, why is it the city’s business to build a pool to directly compete with the fitness centers?)

Without any delay as he was walking away from me to press a point, then he came back at me and I said,

â€œMr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor… Is this an official city meeting or a campaign event? If it is an official city meeting you cannot advocate a position.â€

Oops the voice inside me came outâ€¦ The mayor and I sparred for about 5 minutes. Mike stated he was mayor 24 / 7 he could say anything he wanted when he wanted. My questions and statements were consistent, If it is an official city event, he cannot state an advocacy position. Also, since this event was posted on the official City Website, it is a city meeting, not a campaign event so no more campaigning.

The mayor was not happy. I was told by the mayor if I did not like what he was doing, I should run for mayor. I reminded him, we started the new petition drive to stop official interference in the citizen’s debate.

The other two ballot issues were hardly mentioned after our warm discussion. At a point, about 20 of the audience members got up and headed to a funeral. I guess the mayor’s event was the pre-funeral stop. The meeting continued but never returned to the ballot issues. We got back to city questions.

We also learned from an audience member, she had the money to go out of town for events but wanted more free events to attend in Sioux Falls. Why can’t the city entertain me, for free?

There will be members of our group attending â€˜education’ events to remind the city paid employees to watch what they say. Their boss’ version of education if strangely close to advocacy. We are taking notes. To those who plan to attend this meetings, take notes. When a city employee or mayor attend these meetings as an official of the city, don’t be afraid to correct them. They are wrong. They are breaking state law. They are breaking current city code. Our petition effort will tighten the loophole they feel they have to usurp the people’s right to petition their government.

Developers Development SF City Council Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Parks and Rec

Interesting Math

l3wis February 23, 2014 18Comments

Funny how Dunham can build a 276-unit apartment complex with underground parking AND an INDOOR pool for $22 Million. But it will cost the city $19 million to build a stand alone indoor pool.

Why is it when private enterprise does something it is about 4x cheaper then when the city does it?

Developers Development Sioux Falls

Good thing SON had Shape Places revoked, or the Whittier neighborhood couldn’t protest the homeless shelter

l3wis February 21, 2014 36Comments

A couple of ‘special’ stories.

The first talks about a conditional use permit going before the planning commission concerning unhappy neighbors near The Banquet objecting to the proposed Catholic diocese homeless shelter. If SON had not referred Shape Places, these folks wouldn’t even have the opportunity to voice their current concerns to anyone.Â SON has said all along that if the city can do this in their neighborhood, they can do it in yours too.

The second story by Don Jorgensen demonstrates the complete lack of integrity by Sioux Falls City Planner Jeff Schmitt as he continues his “educational” crusade to convince people that somehow the Walmart at 85th and Minnesota is NOT related to Shape Places. In his words, they “just happened” to be before the city council at the same time. Sure Jeff.

Just like the story concerning the proposed homeless shelter above, had SON not referred Shape Places when they did, there would not be an opportunity for citizens to voice their concerns over the proposed Walmart, and the good folks at Henry Carlson Company like Meredith Larson, Diane Derry and Dawn Hass (or is it Haas?), would be rolling in the dough.

Meredith Larson, the vice president of preconstruction services for Henry Carlson Co., has been on the commission for 10 years. He was one of four commissioners this week to vote in favor of the rezoning on a 4-2 vote.

Henry Carlson has done millions of dollars of work for Walmart here and in the region over the past several years. But, Larson said, all of that work was earned through a competitive bidding process. And any work that Walmart awards in building two new stores in Sioux Falls â€” including the controversial store at 85th Street and Minnesota Avenue â€” also would be awarded through a competitive process.

Jeff, who serves at the pleasure of Mayor Huether, keeps telling people if Shape Places doesn’t pass, Sioux Falls is headed straight back to 1983. Nothing could be further from the truth. The current Sioux Falls zoning ordinances have been continuously improved and amended since 1983 hundreds of times. These are the same zoning ordinances that have served the city of Sioux Falls well through record growth for years now, (i.e. nearly $600 million in building permits last year).

Under the proposed Shape Places, the Conditional Use Permitting (CUP) process will be removed. The folks with SON realized last spring that if Shape Places passed they would no longer have any input under the CUP Process as it related to the proposed Walmart at 85th & Minnesota. Before referring Shape Places last spring, SON asked the city council to please keep the CUP process as part of the proposed Shape Places amendments to ensure continued citizen input as it relates to development near their property (see above story again concerning the homeless shelter if you forgot how important that is). The city council, Jeff Schmitt and other planning staff told the people with SON ‘NO’Â when Shape Places was passed. Not to be ignored, that decision was subsequently referred to a vote by SON.

The rest is history. So, for a short while at least, the citizens in Sioux Falls, like those living near The Banquet will still have the right to voice their concerns over proposed developments in their neighborhoods thanks to the efforts of SON. A vote No on April 8th against Shape Places will allow that long-standing input from our fellow citizensÂ to remainÂ a part of our city’s future for years to come.

And to further comment on the Whittier neighborhood situation. I do agree with the Diocese that there needs to be a ‘DAY’ warming facility. But a more appropriate place would be by the county shelter Downtown by the jail and courthouse. Or even a better idea would be to move the Diocese’s humble servant, the Bishop into a more appropriate living arrangement, like a one bedroom apartment and convert his home into a shelter 🙂

I have felt all along this is a political move, the downtown developers don’t like the Good Shepard facility only a few blocks from all of their luxury condos they are building, so why not move the shelter to the poorest neighborhood in the city, right next to the The Banquet? Let someone else (the working poor, who don’t already have enough problems in this crappy economy) deal with the homeless.

How dare the ‘Specials’ who live downtown or even the Cathedral neighborhood elites have to look at or deal with the homeless!

While I commend the Diocese for wanting to fill a void in our community, I also commend the Whittier neighborhood for standing up to it. We can do better, and find a more appropriate location, but it’s so easy to kick the little man when he is down? Isn’t it? Heck they even kick the bigger man (upper middle-class SON neighborhood) because while they are partially ‘Special’ they are not ‘Extra Special’ like the biggest ‘Specials’ of our community.

A South DaCola foot soldier contributed to this post.

Music Sioux Falls