August 2015

We bitch that the kids have no place to swim in the winter yet close the city pools the hottest week of the year

The irony and the political posturing couldn’t be more obvious;

Sioux Falls public pools will begin to close at the end of this week. Come to the news conference to learn how pool closing dates are determined, how staffing levels are affected by college start dates and fall high school activity start dates, and which pools will close first across Sioux Falls.

So now the sour grapes of the late school start date are starting to affect city politics. Wild Water West must be giddy. I can’t tell you how stupid this is. We complain that the (snowfox team) can’t swim in the winter, yet we close the city pools weeks before the first leaf falls from the trees. This obvious political ploy is disgusting.

We don’t need an inflationary property tax increase.

Believe it or not, I don’t always agree with councilor Staggers, but he is spot on that we don’t need to increase property taxes with inflation. We are a growing city, we also have natural increases in property value. There is NO reason to stick it to property tax owners. Let’s take my little Casa. When I bought my home over 13 years ago I was paying about $475 a year, I now pay over $1,100. Think about that if you own something substantial. When you factor in actual inflation, opt-outs and home improvements, you are looking at taking it in the shorts. Also factor in I am single, don’t have kids in the school district and don’t commit crime, they are basically charging me for the ills and social costs of society. You wonder why people ask for TIFs like free coffee refills, property taxes are killing us.

Traditionally, when Sioux Falls policymakers are slated to boost tax rates as they adopt the next year’s budget, the action item is listed as “an ordinance … providing appropriations and the means of financing for the fiscal year.”

That’s not transparent enough, said Staggers, who’s bringing a measure before the council Tuesday to force proposed tax hikes to be listed on agendas as an ordinance “authorizing an increase in property taxes.”

Staggers said the average citizen doesn’t have time to research every item scheduled for council action, and oftentimes skimming titles is how they learn about what’s happening.

“It’s about transparency,” he said. “It seems like a very reasonable and sensible thing. It should be very clear when we’re having tax increases.”

And I would go farther to agree, being dishonest with the public about supposed tax increases is never good public policy. We wonder why people are moving to the burbs in drones?

The Chicken Lil’s are in full force over the school start date

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Here we go again, calling something a ‘failure’ before it has even been tried;

“It kind of feels like we have snow days coming up, like planned snow days, and we’re certainly going to enjoy it while it lasts, but there is that feeling that, that we’re going to pay for it at some point,” Morrison said.

Morrison was against the change in the district’s school schedule which pushes the start date to after Labor Day.

“There is a little bit of feeling of dread that our kids are falling behind,” he said.

Like the campaign before the vote, they think the handful of AP students are not going to be able to pass testing after Christmas break. I guess if teachers think that is the case, they need to take a long hard look in the mirror. If you have been teaching students for several months and you think they are going to lose that knowledge over a short Christmas break, you must not have much confidence in your teaching abilities. I don’t think these kids will lose a beat. Let’s admit it, this is about SPORTS and they are using the AP students as an excuse.

“From talking to other teachers, too, I hear that, they’ll probably go with it for a few years, and I can see it changing back to the way it was, based on high school students and the AP tests and semester tests,” Middlen said.

“They’re going to negotiate a change, I’m sure of it,” Morrison said.

The School Board had SEVERAL opportunities to negotiate before petitions were taken out, they ignored voters, parents, businesses and tax payers. You lost the election, face reality. A majority of school district voters said they want to start after labor day. Done deal. These are people who pay your wages not some superintendent that used to hide in dark corners with her school board to make decisions. This reminds me of the people who still complain about Drake Springs Pool that was voted on over seven years ago, even though the city’s aquatic consultant said building a pool at Nelson Park would have been a mistake because of ground water issues. So please, let’s stop the bitch session about losing the election, and get back to teaching our children.

UPDATE: Who is missing in this picture?

Go to the Argus website and toggle down to the videos. There is a video of the Governor talking in a luxury suite at a Twins game in Minneapolis to business prospects for the state and the city of Sioux Falls (Dennis mentions Sioux Falls in the video). So who is missing from this grand party that got a lift on a private jet?

Let’s see, we have Slater Barr from the SF Development Foundation, we have Scott Lawrence (whose company gets most of the advertising contracts with the state), you have the governor’s wife, heck, and I think Jodi Schwan even hitched a ride.

So we are talking about recruiting businesses to South Dakota and specifically Sioux Falls, wouldn’t you bring the city’s number one cheerleader? Was he invited? Maybe him and the GM of Stormland-Sick Kids TV had to go to a Greenbay game?

Either way, I find it curious that there wasn’t even a representative from the Mayor’s administration (like Darrin Smith) along for the ride. At least we had Jodi Schwan (a former city employee) representing our Boomtown.

Jodi Schwan for Mayor in 2018!

UPDATE: (From a reader) The community development office was represented there – they sent this guy who got hired earlier in the year. But he wasn’t on the private jet. 

What will the NEW Executive Director of the SDDP do to build the party?

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Besides being unimpressed listening to Suzie Jones Pranger tell us about her resume for 20 minutes at last Friday’s Democratic Forum (her resume is impressive, her speaking and presentation skills are not) She was taken off guard when she was asked very simple questions. I’ll defend her on one front, she had only been on the job for 5 days and probably should not have been thrown into a presentation like this so soon, and the party chair, Ann Tornberg did eventually bail her out.

I wanted to ask Suzie what she would do to get more registered Democrats. James Abourezk beat me to the punch. After himming and hawing for a moment, and pausing, Jim asked again. Suzie said she was going to “pull old lists and start contacting those people” then rambled about Gregory County or something. I left early.

Like I said before, in all fairness, she has only been on the job for 5 days, but she better start educating herself real quick on the reality of party building, because if the Dems continue to lose members at the rate they have been, there may not be a party in SD in a few years.