A South DaCola foot soldier told me there have been a couple of reports that the precinct at Hayward Elementary is supposed to allow voters from either District 9 OR 11 to vote there, but they only have ballots for ONE of the precincts (not sure which one).
I will keep you updated once I learn more.
Rapid City residents are voting on a new Civic Center today, I have a feeling it will fail, but honestly I haven’t seen any polling so who knows.
But I really got a kick out of what mayor Allender said yesterday;
“Our economy can only grow with outside money, and that’s a significant source of outside money. Communities today also need to make sure they are paying attention to the quality of life issues. Large employers know this. And that is that they have trouble keeping, retaining and attracting young employee talent. That is only done through the amenities that the city has to offer,” Allender said.
Yeah, that was the song and dance we heard from our former mayor about the Denty. While it has been popular and operating well, it hasn’t made a dent in our economy. In fact I would argue it has been a vacuum. Since it’s inception our sales tax revenue has been down and the BID room tax has declined. Why? Well most of the revenue generated from the Denty goes to SMG, promoters and artists (out of town) while the rest of us foot the mortgage which gets ZERO offset from revenue.
I encourage RC voters to vote it down and don’t believe the hype. It will never ever pay for itself in NEW growth.
SIRE is the software agenda management program the city council uses to manage it’s meetings documents and videos. Some of us from the public have long argued it hasn’t worked properly, in fact in this presentation they will make today at the informational (DOC: SIRE-ONBASE) they admit that it really hasn’t been upgraded in 5 years and really didn’t work that well before that. In fact the last person who tried to get it working properly was terminated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK_2kHME8j8
We kept asking the same question? Why? As you see from the figures, it really doesn’t cost that much more to upgrade the software. So why was there a delay? And why now with a new mayor and council they are finally upgrading the system?
See, that’s the stickler here. While the city council has supposed control of their staff, and I know for a fact several past and present councilors have asked the software gets upgraded, somehow the council got trumped by the mayor’s central services department.
While some would say that our council wasn’t held hostage the past 8 years by a power hungry mayor, I beg to differ. His uncontrollable desire to control information is why the IT department virtually ignored the problems with SIRE.
Hopefully the council and new mayor won’t just stop at upgrading SIRE but fixing the entire website. Let’s move ‘Fast & Furious’ on this on to!
It has often amazed me when Former Mayor Coors Light & Olives would talk about all of his ‘WINS’ and wouldn’t address ‘REAL’ issues in our community, like Public Transit and the Meth epidemic. But he also wouldn’t address the little things that just needed a ‘tweak’.
There was a lot of excuses about Falls Park Safety, but no action. It seems TenHaken gets it, it needs to be fixed, so let’s get on it;
“We are moving fast and furious on a proposal,†Nelson said. “Our approach is to enhance not only the safety but also the visitor experience in the park with improved accessibility.â€
And that is the job of good government. When you see a need for something to be better, you dig in and do it instead of making excuses about mystery reports and having multiple press conferences about nothing.
Next big tweak Paul? Transparency. Let’s move fast and furious on that to.
I can’t speak for TenHaken and his office yet. We haven’t heard anything from 9th and Dakota, of course there has only been one official meeting, and tomorrow’s city council meeting seems to be some hold overs from the former administration.
Sometimes hearing NOTHING is a good thing, sometimes it is not.
But when it comes to the city council it seems business as usual. The city council, who has complained about the former mayor’s transparency hasn’t opened their books up either. The city council posted their informational meeting agenda on Friday and as of noon today there is still no supporting documents on what those presentations will be.
I’m not sure who is responsible for the agenda of the informational but my guess would be the Clerk’s office and council’s operations employees. Of course it wouldn’t be entirely their fault either, they take their marching orders from the city council.
There is also nothing top secret about the three presentations, there would be no harm in posting the supporting documents ahead of time.
Transparency was the #1 issue in the last municipal election, but was our city government listening?
l3wis