June 2018

McKennan Park House Demo

Cameraman Bruce got an emergency call to show up at 7:30am to McKennan Park to start recording the Sioux Falls, SD Big Yellow House go to the Ground. I took 4 hours but it is not more. The heavy equipment operators did an amazing job controlling the destruction on June 7, 2018.

No one is a winner in this mess. The house was a well built, very nice addition to the right neighborhood, just not where it ended up. This has been traumatic to the neighbors and the entire neighborhood. This stuff divides communities and it has done it here.

There are many of us who know who should take a major chunk of blame in this mess, the former mayor and his administration. They could have setup the federal historic standards system properly to protect this and other similar neighborhoods including downtown.

The full 4 hour 5 camera recording will be posted separated in another.

The city of Sioux Falls caused all of this to happen. Period.

DaCola’s Note: I drove by at about 11 AM and there were about 50 people standing and watching from McKennan Park. Some kid should have sold lemonade, could of made a fortune.

 

UPDATE: Sioux Falls City Council Vice-Chair Selberg proposing ordinance to move public input to end of meeting

UPDATE: Apparently Selberg is proposing this because the meetings are supposed to be family friendly;

“They’re getting a show that’s not very family friendly sometimes,” he said.

Makes you wonder how ‘family friendly’ the Continental Congress was? What a putz.

So the first action/legislation of new Vice-Chair Selberg is to tell the public their input doesn’t matter. I knew it wasn’t a good idea to elect him vice-chair. He is proposing the first reading on June 12th to move public input to the back of the meeting, Councilor Rick Kiley is expected to support the measure to get it on the agenda.

As I have mentioned in the past, this could seriously backfire on them if they pass this. You could get citizens sitting through the meetings and commenting on every single item. Than at the end of the meeting chewing out the council for some of the crappy decisions they made throughout the night. If you think the meetings are long now, just wait.

But what makes this even more egregious is that there hasn’t been a public discussion about this. They just had a working session about public input and NO one brought this up, in fact Councilor Neitzert specifically said he did not want to talk about it – obviously he knew about the proposal. The rumor is that Mayor TenHaken is pushing this behind the scenes and getting Lloyd Companies Realtor Selberg to do his dirty work.

I also believe the developers are behind it. I think after Lloyd Companies got their asses handed to them over the failed apartment land deal on 6th street they saw the power of public input and how it can squash their devious plans.

Councilor Theresa Stehly said this to me about the action, “It’s an assault on citizens free speech rights. A direct action to suffocate and annihilate the citizens voice at council meetings.”

UPDATE: Sioux Falls City Councilor Stehly asking for an advisory opinion from Ethics Commission

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhMw7mOZgSc

She is wondering if it is OK for city councilors to circulate petitions. The ethics commission will give their opinion tomorrow at 3:30 PM. The meeting will be at city hall in the old commission chambers. While I support councilors wanting to circulate petitions, I have encouraged Stehly to try first to work with her peers on the council to get legislation passed and if that fails than do a petition drive. I know she has run into walls with council in the past, but I have argued that mainly had to do with the rubber stamp leadership of council and doing whatever the mayor told them to do. I think her opportunity to get legislation passed on the council is much greater now with the new mayor and council than what it has been in the past two years.

UPDATE: Stormland-TV is speculating that Big T is going to try to have a petition drive to change our form of government. Maybe. Doesn’t really matter, she should have the right to have any petition drive she wants to. I do know that her and I have talked for years about changing Project TRIM and having the city trim their own trees in the boulevard (if the citizen is unable to). With the Ash Bore crisis coming upon us, right now would be the time to get the city to take care of those trees. I do know, like snow gates, it may be hard for Theresa to get that past the council, even though Brekke does support it. We will see. Stehly hasn’t shared with me what her intentions are, but it would be interesting to watch a sitting city councilor lead a petition drive to change our form of government. Things could get very, very, very ugly.

Mayor TenHaken proposes a Narcotics Crime Unit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6PTn5sX_dg

I’m going to take a ‘wait and see’ approach to Paul’s plan. Not because I have been light on him lately, but I’m not sure what it all entails. I will say though I have little confidence in Chief Burns and I would have replaced him, also I hope this doesn’t turn into putting away small time users (who really need treatment more than anything.)

Good Luck.