April 2019

Sioux Falls Community College

I’m not going down the road of who knew what and when. The State Legislature is full of ignorant whiners that are more worried about harmless crops, abortion and guns. Education is NOT even on their radar. Let’s forget about them for a moment.

I think it is a fantastic idea to have a Sioux Falls Community College. I am a SE Tech Alumni and I enjoyed my two years at the school (though I wished I had the money to further my education – we will get to that in a moment.)

Technical education works for people. I have often argued unless you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, what’s point of college? Don’t get wrong, there are many other careers that need a college degree, but for the most part, tech education works.

It’s cheaper, it’s faster and you can get good paying jobs (if you leave the state).

The debate that is going on behind the scenes is how we keep it affordable and tuition low?

I already know what the right wingers have up their sleeves, they want to hire non-union teachers and they want to have in-state work requirements for scholarships. While this may help with the balance sheets, it is short-sighted.

How can we keep tuition low (or at least debt low)?

My idea is too have extensive work study programs and volunteer tuition forgiveness.

How does it work? A volunteer program would have to be set up. And if you volunteer for certain non-profits, the city or even private business thru internships you would get a break on your tuition. It could be a massive program that is funded by the state, the city and businesses and non-profits. They would pay into the tuition fund (this would allow us to have a high level of teachers and learning). This would make the college more affordable, it would help out the community and would be flexible for the students. They wouldn’t have to be stuck working in our state if they didn’t want to and we would be winning on both fronts; A properly funded higher education institution and affordable learning.

Oh, and NO guns on campus.

City of Sioux Falls schedule of Events • May 1, 2019

Planning Commission Meeting, 6 PM, Wednesday May 1, 2019

On Thursday, May 2, city employees and city councilors will have an opportunity to see a presentation on the Sioux Steel Development, then they will be wined and dined, but there’s nothing ‘unethical’ about that.

On Wednesday, May 8, The Mayor TenHaken will give his Big Hairy Audacious State of the city address. He interestingly picked to do the address at SE Tech. I assume he did this to talk about the NEW Sioux Falls Community College.

On Thursday, May 9, The SF Housing Summit will be held at the DT Holiday Inn (instead of a city owned building). At this point there is still a registration fee for the event, and I noticed that the public input portion was left off the calendar (It is supposed to be after 3 PM).

On that same day Levitt will give us their concert series lineup. Not sure why this is ‘Invite only’. How is the public going to find out who it is if they are not invited? LOL.

I’m actually very excited about the concert series and plan to attend every concert. And I will probably purchase food and drink while I am at the shows. But I’m still going to fight to change it to BYOB. If this doesn’t happen this year, I will work the council to change this eventually. If we truly want to give taxpayers a FREE concert series (after they have helped fund this program in capital and maintenance) we should have the opportunity to bring our own alcoholic beverages like HALF of the other Levitts across the country allow.

Sioux Falls Board of Ethics, April 25, 2019

Surprise, surprise Sioux Falls government ethics is in question. The Sioux Falls Board of Ethics was asked what should have been a simple question by City Councilor Theresa Stehly on April 25, 2019.

Can a developer, who is planning a major downtown project where they will be pitching a $24 million tax break, host a food and booze event without an ethics violation being levied against the invited city officials?

Anything can be can be questioned if it has de Minimis or nominal value. Even if there is no minimum or maximum value, if there is no minimum or maximum time period, it can be an ethical conflict. If dots can be shown or perceived or the optics can make it look bad, it is an ethical conflict. These have been the rulings in two previous decisions of the Board of Ethics.

What we learned in this meeting, apparently this does not apply to City Council or department staff if a developer wants to wine and dine the right people.

This was a preemptive advisory request by Stehly, not a post event ethics violation she was asking the Board to rule on.

The Board decided, since there is no “crime” yet, there was nothing they could do to preemptively advise the people in their jurisdiction to not attend the heavy food and alcoholic drink event designed to soften the $24 million TIF request.

The previous ruling requests were preemptive in nature, so was this one. Explain this to the cops and librarians, how South Dakota has only ethics laws affecting them (kind of).