2016

I wouldn’t want either across the street from me

Some times you have to make sacrifices if you want to live in a certain part of town, or should you? I live in the landing flight pass of the airport, 2 blocks from where hospital helicopter takes off from, 4 railroad tracks, several bars and casinos and a busy arterial street. But I like my location and my mortgage payment, so I drown out the noise.

These neighbors seem to be arguing over whether they want a plastic or metal trash can next to their homes;

A Sioux Falls man says his business neighbor is in clear violation of city zoning rules.

Insurance Auto Auctions, Inc. is a salvage yard, Bernie Schmidt says, an industrial-grade business that doesn’t belong next to a residential neighborhood.

The city says the 11-acre business is a “vehicle storage and auction facility,” fully compliant with rules for a light industrial zone and capable of harmonious coexistence with residential neighbors.

The distinction is important: Salvage yards aren’t permitted in light industrial zones. Wholesaling and manufacturing facilities are.

Kind of sounds like they are splitting hairs. Inoperable vehicles sitting in a ‘yard’ kind of makes it a ‘salvage’ yard. Either way, I wouldn’t want to live door to neither.

But the interesting part of the story is how the county and city look at things differently;

City officials say Tiede’s ruling isn’t binding for the city, which uses different zoning language than the county.

This happens quite often, and the city often bucks the county to get their way. I wish the neighbors luck.

Avera’s statement is laughable

Gotta hand it to Avera when it comes to ‘policing’ smoking on their property;

An Avera spokesman said employees are not allowed to smoke on any Avera-owned property, whether it’s the main campus or other properties it owns in the neighborhood.

“Our policy hasn’t changed but we can’t afford to have somebody sit there and patrol it all the time,” said Jay Gravolt, Avera’s director of public relations.

 

BAHAHAHAHA! But the hospital can afford to give thousands of dollars a month out in FREE meals to PUBLIC employees (SFPD) who park directly in front of the property involved (to go feed their faces on sick and dying people’s money). In between loading their bullet proof vests with multiple cartons of milk and feeding their faces on the private health dime, because apparently the city pays them so poorly they can’t afford a sandwich or the brown bag to put it in.

Can’t afford to patrol it? Maybe give a couple of extra monster cookies to the piggies and ask them to go over and ‘butt’ these people away.

Gravolt said hospital security and administrators often give verbal warnings when they see people smoking on Avera property, but they can’t police public sidewalks.

“We can’t control the right of way,” he said.

 

But the SFPD can, and littering on public property is a crime.

Councilor Jamison was only $2.1 million off the mark when it comes to the new city admin building

proposed-new-sioux-falls-city-administration-building

 

Remember when Greg threw out a ‘hypothetical’ number;

Imagine my surprise (as well as the mayor’s) when councilor Jamison threw the $24 Million number out there last night at the city council meeting (FF to the construction manager at risk discussion towards the end). It was pretty obvious from the Mayor’s reaction (he literally flipped out on councilor Jamison for putting it out there) that Greg may not be to far off the mark, or someone within the city or private development gave him the numbers.

Well the hammer dropped on the actual cost of the building today at the informational, without a lot of explanation as to why we need it (and underground parking).

While I have still been seething about the ignorant Republicans and cowardice Democrats for voting for a sales tax increase (then turning around and voting for another possible one on municipalities) in the state legislature, I am still baffled why this building is needed. Well let the SF Twitter feed explain;

fleet

Apparently the City’s Fleet Vehicles drive themselves?

Last in Pay

One of the big arguments that comes up with bringing up teacher pay is bringing up the pay of other professionals. Is it fair to raise taxes on all of these OTHER professionals so teachers can get paid more? As I have said, it is purely ignorant to raise regressive sales taxes for teacher pay when the money is already there (heck, probably sitting in reserves). This is about presenting intelligent plans to raise teacher pay, not knee jerk reactions. People want this increase SO bad, they are willing to fall back on fiscally irresponsible and ignorant taxation plans to get it. That my friends is called GREED.

Let’s pay teachers more, but let’s pay everybody else more to, because if that happens, there will be plenty of school funding sources to go around.

I hope the sales tax plan fails on Monday, but I also hope a doable plan comes forward without raising sales taxes.

lastinpay