Well it was good news today for those us that fight for transparency at city hall;
The city of Sioux Falls must make public a contract that it negotiated over repairs on the Denny Sanford Premier Center, the South Dakota Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
Sioux Falls officials have refused to release the contract, which reimbursed the city $1 million after warping was discovered on the exterior metal panels on the most expensive project in city history. After the defects were noticed, city officials negotiated a settlement with contractors who worked on the project, but they refused to release the details to the taxpayers who paid for the $180 million event center.
After talking to some people from the media and an elected official, it looks like we may see the contract as early as today. It sounds like the city attorney’s office is in meetings this morning trying to figure out how to release it to the public (that worries me). I also understand that the city’s lead attorney is out on leave, so this ought to be an interesting release. Hopefully we will see it in it’s entirety and we can finally put to bed all of the conspiracy theories on both sides. All I have ever asked for is the truth in the matter, no matter how much this has cost the taxpayers.
As we know, this all came about when Councilor Rex Rolfing asked about the bends and dents in the siding at a council informational meeting. Which got myself and cameraman Bruce to start looking into it, and the next thing you know the media was involved.
Like I said, this contract may NEVER show us everything, but least we may finally see who did the botched siding job (it wasn’t MJ Dalsin) and how they came up with the $1 million dollar figure when the siding job is actually valued at around $3 million.
Here is a handy PLAYLIST of all the Denty’s siding troubles.
As the building siding was being installed I started asking why the siding looked so crappy. Within days Rex made his stupid oil can video statement. Our YouTube channel shows the progression of the city lies and storytelling about this building.
The stories told then about our local contractors being to blame will now be put to rest. Congratulations to the Argus Leader, Jonathan Ellis and the rest of the media who fought for our right to know.
Lately, there have been some winds of change coming out of Pierre, which are encouraging…. First, the Division of Banking came out recently with an activist interpretation of the 36% cap to the detriment of the Dollar Loan Center and now this…. All quite refreshing after a winter of discontent, when the “House of Lords” legislature snubbed its nose at IM22 and the will of the people….
In the spirit of transparency, what did it cost the City of Sioux Falls to say no all the way to the Supreme Court ?
In the spirit of transparency, the city of Sioux Falls is the major abuser of a legal insurance pool system in South Dakota. When the town gets a chance, it brings in South Dakota Assurance so they can hide the cost of legal services from us. In other words they write off the cost of these litigations to insurance instead of legal.