Guest Post by Bruce Danielson

Here we go again, let’s build up hysteria and then spend millions of dollars under the table, over the table and in closed back rooms but claim transparency. It’s now 2019 and let’s remember and discover what’s new in the city of Sioux Falls. We see the same things in every project of dubious or questionable value to the town.

Let’s review a few:

The City Center Administration Building had to be built because a planning department employee claimed he had pee running down his City Hall basement office wall.

An indoor swimming pool our town could not live without so it was built on land loaned to the City of Sioux Falls and could be repossessed by the real land owner, the Federal government at any time (and probably will once the VA expands some more).

An event center designed to suck every bit of money out of the community to the benefit of the construction and the out of town management companies. Then to top it all off, put it in a location guaranteed to NOT help the struggling locally owned businesses of Sioux Falls.

The different emergency for sewer and water infrastructure bonding of over $300 million dollars to benefit a set of special developers and to hide the disastrous City Center HVAC system mistakes.

The parking ramp that had to be built, even if it does bleed the Parking Enterprise fund down to nothing keeping us from having properly maintained streets to drive to the parking spots. To do this we saw illegal asbestos removal, a building collapsed, a man die, and a developer defaulting, what a trifecta all in the name of ___________ (you fill in the blank). Now we have to spend $1.5 million of 2nd penny infrastructure money to protect the building that should have never been built. WE have to protect our investment but whose head will roll because of this? By the way, where is the Parking Director Matt Nelson these days?

Now have you seen the strange looking new machine being hauled around town lately? (At the top of the page)

This recent Vermeer Grinder – Shredder purchase for $964,270 by the city is for use in grinding trees at the landfill and around Sioux Falls. Do you know what is wrong about this purchase? Sioux Falls has an agreement to have a private business do this for FREE. Hidden in plain sight (if you can find the Consent Agenda of the July 5th, 2019 Council meeting) is contract 19-4165. Our administration spent almost $1 million dollars of 2nd penny without any discussion. Not only do we take away money from the pothole budget, but we take work away from a private business who was doing the city’s shredding to undercut the limited market the business has developed.

Once again, a city of Sioux Falls administration, pretending to be legitimate, upstanding, honest, trustworthy (is it an “and” or an “or”) TRANSPARENT is screwing all of us and trying to hide the evidence.

It’s 2nd penny be damned, full steam ahead on bonding everything. Get ready for the next bonding project(s) that never were bonded before. This is to keep the bonding companies and their supporters happy. You even see it in the Charter Revision Commission this year. Now consider the new Southeast fire station, street projects (remember the 2nd penny was created so streets would NEVER be bonded), the new training center and more are going to be in the next go round of bonding coming to a city council near you. So say good bye to getting your potholes repaired. Expect to see your locally owned employer or your privately owned business going down with city hall’s wall pee as more of the city’s limited funds are taken over by the bonding companies, all for another edifice coming to you.

20 Thoughts on “It’s back to the well and is the well is drying up?

  1. "Very Stable Genius" on November 10, 2019 at 3:31 pm said:

    The second penny is a textbook example of mission creep.

  2. 2nd penny tax. Will never go away and will constantly be used as a loan source when the city thinks they have a spending crisis.

  3. D@ily Spin on November 10, 2019 at 9:57 pm said:

    Has the city done anything positive since Home Rule Charter? When strong mayor happened, major corruption ensued. There’s nothing relevant that’s public benefit. It’s been 20 years of dictatorial kleptocracy benefiting 3 mayors and many developers. With CMAR, the contractor crooks are not responsible if it fails or is not finished. They just ask for another couple million that disappears into litigation. What really surprises me is parties related to the foolishness hold themselves in high esteem. The upper one percent of this city are Trumps.

  4. D@ily Spin on November 10, 2019 at 10:07 pm said:

    It’s a million dollar machine that will sell for $100 at the next city auction. It’ll be bought and used by a private insider contractor who will charge the city a million for the next cleanup and sell the wood produced for another million. After a few years billing the city millions, it’ll be sold for $10k melt down value.

  5. Shredding Transparency on November 11, 2019 at 7:38 am said:

    What happened to the small one the city had?

  6. anominous on November 11, 2019 at 9:29 am said:

    we still got all of them ash borer trees to take down yet and that wood is pretty hard to chop up what do you want them to use, that one in the end of Fargo

  7. Desperately seeking Seney Island on November 11, 2019 at 1:44 pm said:

    “Fargo?”….. Now, you’re talkin! 🙂

    ‘Fargo’ needs a sequel, however. They could call it ‘Margo.’ It could be about a waitress (based on the “Mavis” character from the old Old Home Bread commercials), who works at a truckstop on North Cliff Avenue, with most of the scenes playing out along eastern I-90 and the I-29 stretch from Fargo to Sioux Falls.

    Do you remember a couple of years ago when that West Fargo developer got mad at Sioux Falls and left a “message” on the sign of one of the former truck stops at Cliff and I-90? Well, the movie plot could be built around that and the why. There could also be a cameo appearance involving mayor Z, maybe Skippy, too, with the rivalry between SDSU and NDSU playing out in the movie, and with a murder taking place at halftime in innocent Brookings, South Dakota…. #HotDish #OhGeez #HowYaDoin? #GollySakes!

    ( – and Woodstock adds: “‘Now, you’re talkin’ all right!” ……”When are we going to start rolling the film?!”….(“Geez, I love a good hotdish!”))

  8. This blog post is a bit misleading.

    If the contractor takes down the tree, they will need to shred it. If our forestry department takes it down, we shred it. Also anyone can drop off trees and the city will have to shed those.

    I do believe this machine was budgeted in the Ash Bore fund.

  9. LJL, it was never reported on prior to the Consent Agenda vote. It is always interesting how these types of secret purchases are made on a Tuesday night when the Consent Agenda is not provided to the public so we can ask questions. Just ask Rebecca Krein how is feels to be arrested for not providing the documents to the public: “Walworth County Auditor Rebecca Krein was arrested for violating a state law that requires materials related to an open meeting agenda item to be made available to the public.” https://www.aberdeennews.com/news/walworth-county-auditor-arrested-for-violating-sd-state-law/article_df626132-d515-5450-b34a-810b96993a8f.html

    Our secret society of government officials may be spending time in the iron bar county club?

  10. LJL, Lefty, J.R., or whatever you are calling yourself these days, this has nothing to do with the EAB, it has, once again, to do with taxpayers subsidizing the ethanol industry because it can’t stand alone.

  11. anominous on November 12, 2019 at 10:01 am said:

    didnt think u could make ethanol from wood chips but ill try it if you say so

  12. Please cite your source indicating ethanol is subsidized in any way. Subsidies have been gone for almost a decade.

  13. As for the wood chippers, POET uses the chips for fuel to help make the ethanol. It was being done at NO cost to taxpayers by Mueller Pallets, until the city decided to take them out of the picture and buy their own chipper that we did NOT need, because we already had a free service doing it for us.

    http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/1396/poet-to-power-chancellor-facility-with-wood-waste

    “Our services relieve city landfills, tree services and construction companies from the waste wood problem,” said John Kirchner, sales and marketing director for Mueller Pallets. “Our process converts a former liability into an energy asset at less than a quarter of the cost of natural gas per [British thermal unit].”

  14. You may wish to re-read the articles you attached regarding ethanol. If forcing the blending of ethanol is a subsidy, I guess I am wrong. However, if there is no tax payer burden, how can it be a subsidy? Ethanol has received many subsidies, however that environment is long past. Your understanding is not up to date.

  15. So Muller was going to chip the trees to sell to Poet and the city shorted them out by buying a chipper.

    Your source for this info is?

  16. Mrs. Mueller explains what their company does in the video below (FF 1:19). They basically DON’T charge government entities to do this work, saving taxpayers millions in NOT having to fund and maintenance the equipment and grinding. As I understand it, this was costing US nothing, now we have an investment. I think that POET cut a better deal with the city then they had with Mueller and that is the point – forcing the taxpayers to help the bottom line of POET.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xkzeq6Aitw

  17. anominous on November 14, 2019 at 9:03 am said:

    https://www.agupdate.com/tristateneighbor/news/ash-borer-moving-in/article_ec5aed6c-5546-11e9-b0be-ff64b28ae6ba.html

    “The ash borer infestation has probably been in Sioux Falls about five years, and it likely came on pallet wood.

    The quarantine area around Sioux Falls was drawn specifically to include the Poet ethanol plant in Chancellor. That’s where contractors are taking the waste wood.”

  18. Always thinking on November 15, 2019 at 12:05 pm said:

    I think it is time for one of the local media markets to do an investigative piece on the, “Pallet Wood Infestation.”

    It’s an interesting theory and further proof that you need to be careful of the wood amongst you.

    Perhaps, we should start burning all of the pallets in town, but unfortunately that would cause all of the forklift drivers here in River City to be laid-off and a collapse of Foundation Park dreams as well.

  19. anominous on November 15, 2019 at 11:31 pm said:

    i said it b4 many time on here the only trees that ll grow good out here is cottonwood or oak but no one f’n lisns

Post Navigation