Sioux Falls City Council Agenda, Dec 8, 2020

Informational Meeting • 4 PM

• COVID-19 Update by Jill Franken, Director of Public Health (no supporting documents yet in SIRE).

• Engineering Design Standards Updates by Nick Borns, Aaron Fagerness, and Ryan Johnson, Principal Engineers (no supporting documents yet in SIRE).

Regular Meeting • 6 PM (This is the NEW meeting time because of the authoritarians on the council).

Item #7, Approval of Contracts

Sub Item #1, Leasing Police Vehicles. This one actually surprised me, I thought we bought vehicles and once they run their course we auction them. I am not opposed to it, but would be curious what vehicles these are. As I said with the administration building, it made little sense for taxpayers to spend millions in capital and maintenance when we could more economically rent office space, or better yet have many work from home.

Sub Item #8, Affordable Housing Solutions, Neighborhood Revitalization
Program Site Acquisition/Development Agreement. $165K. While I am all for creating more affordable housing, our approach in Sioux Falls is comparable to killing a gnat with a bazooka. I still think my idea of giving small apartment building owners and smaller home rentals and small individual homeowners mini-TIFs to fix up property goes a lot farther and has NO initial costs except collecting less property taxes for a small amount of time. I have suggested the TIF’s should be only 1-3 years at most. Of course this is NOT how we do things in Sioux Falls, we give to big time freeloaders and hope the urine trickles down to us little guys.

Sub Item #11, Training Werks, Agreement to Provide Coaching, Assessments, and Consulting to Employees and Officers of the City. I’m trying to figure out when the city stopped hiring ‘qualified’ people. Wait, don’t answer that question. We seem to be spending a lot of money to coach these folks. I also don’t know if I have much confidence in a place that can’t spell works correctly 🙂

Item #11, Deferred from the meeting of Tuesday, December 1, 2020; A RESOLUTION APPROVING THE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE CITY OF SIOUX FALLS AND AMERICAN FEDERATION OF STATE, COUNTY, AND MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES. (I’m not quite sure what will happen, but I guess the council has not been happy about how the Mayor put the budget forward before this contract was finalized).

Item #12, AN EMERGENCY ORDINANCE OF THE CITY OF SIOUX FALLS, SD, TO REQUIRE FACE COVERING IN AN INDOOR PUBLIC PLACE WHERE 6-FOOT SOCIAL DISTANCING CANNOT BE ACHIEVED. (this is an extension of the mask mandate, but still has no penalties for non-compliance).

Item #14, A RESOLUTION DECLARING CERTAIN REAL PROPERTY OF THE CITY SURPLUS AND AUTHORIZING THE DEMOLITION THEREOF. (This is the Tuthill house demolition proposal. I suspect many people will be coming to testify against this. If I had to make a guess on how the council will vote, I think they will have at least 5 votes to save the house, or at least give it a year to figure it out. I am hoping that the council takes to task the Parks Director, Don Kearney, for letting this property go to Hell).

Item #15, A RESOLUTION APPOINTING MEMBERS OF THE DISTRICTING COMMISSION.

It’s actually a pretty good crew (besides the hospital executive, but I guess he was the only one to apply in that district) I am not sure who all applied, but I do know some ‘rats’ didn’t make the final cut;

Name • Party Affiliation • District
Bob Thimjon • Democrat • Southwest
Joseph Kippley • Republican • Southeast
Mark Millage • Republican • Northwest
Barbara Brooks Johnson • Democrat • Northeast
Tom Hurlbert • Independent • Central

Item #16, A RESOLUTION ESTABLISHING REPORTING STRUCTURES, PAY SCALES, AND EVALUATIONS FOR CITY COUNCIL-APPOINTED STAFF. (It is interesting while they list the pay scales, they don’t tell us what ‘step’ each of the employees are currently at. What you will notice is that the pay range right now varies between $63-108K a year plus benefits. Interesting with such good wages you would think they would be able to figure out how to run meetings, properly record them and provide documentation to the public. Maybe instead of a ‘step’ raise it’s time to give them a kick in the rear.)