A friend asked their banker recently an interesting question (the bank is a national chain that has several branches in SF). They brought up Alex Jensen running for city council and being a business banker for First Premier and asked if their bank would allow this? He said, ‘Absolutely NOT’. He saw it as a major conflict of interest especially if the bank was seeking to do business with the city. Currently First Premier has an exclusive contract with the city of Sioux Falls. They used to spread the city’s accounts around to several banks in town, but the last mayor ended that.
Finance Director Pritchett has suggested though that a new RFP should be probably put out. Yah think?
In a very strange exchange tonight at the city council meeting, Mayor Selfie made an astonishing admission. During the public input for the proposed campaign finance ordinance, David Zokaites mentions at the end of his testimony that Paul said last week from the dais that he was running for re-election, so David said ‘He’s got competition – me!’.
Paul got irritated and told David, ‘I would remind you David Z based on that you are not to use the dais per executive order to promote your candidacy, so this will be the last time you will be able to mention that, from the podium.’
David quickly snipes back, ‘That goes for both of us.’ and PTH says, ‘I don’t speak from THAT podium. That’s just a reminder of that executive order and thank you for adhering to those rules of this chamber.’
Wow! What arrogance! First off, people have been making those kind of pronouncements from that podium for years. Why? Because they can. I actually think it is hilarious that Paul thinks he can write an executive order (and not tell anyone about it until tonight) that is unconstitutional. No mayor in any city in this country can override the 1st Amendment and the US Constitution. It only proves how thick and petty Paul is. The rules for announcements applies to city officials from the dais because they are using their government position (and ultimately our money) to promote themselves. Any candidate that is currently not serving on the city council can say anything about their candidacy from the public input podium. Also, the city council controls their chamber, NOT the mayor. He cannot write an executive order about how the council runs their meetings, that is a violation of the charter, even though I’m more worried about the constitutional violation.
Never thought I would see a mayor in Sioux Falls admit to violating the US Constitution and City Charter at a public meeting. Ellis is right, it’s amateur hour at city hall.
After just a few short months the city has removed the CityLink viewer on the city’s main website. I actually applauded the move for people who don’t have cable television. I’m not sure why it was taken down, but I do know they were having problems with the software last Tuesday. The search engine hasn’t been working well on the city website either.
For all the money we spend on our city website each year (I think it is around $30K a year, which is ironic, my hosting fees cost around $100 a year) you would think it would work? We constantly hear about all the technology our city is investing in, but they can’t get the city website to function properly.
Kids, web development and maintaining a site like this isn’t rocket science, as I have mentioned in the past, the city could actually just copy code from other city websites like Omaha, which I think functions very well. They could also receive free hosting on YouTube for ALL public meetings (instead of just propaganda).
I don’t believe for one moment that these failures are due to ignorance or lack of talent to create such a site, I think it is being done on purpose to make it harder for folks to get information from the city and force them onto Facebook or Twitter to get their information. It should not work that way. All citizens who fund our city website should be able to go to THAT site and get all the information they want or need, including videos and important documents.
When a cluster like this is created, it can only be done on purpose, NO one is that incompetent.
It passed 7-0 (Stehly absent). There of course were pie in the sky statements made, like how we are going to get huge property tax revenue from it – 20 YEARS FROM NOW! They also talked about how they could have asked for $50 million, but they didn’t – how nice of them.
They also falsely stated their is NO cost to the city. Uh, yes there is. We are missing out on millions of tax revenue over the next 20 years, we are going to spend $10 million on the river greenway that fronts this development, which is beneficial to them. They also did not mention that it competes with our taxpayer funded convention center. But lastly, when big private developments get tax rebates like this, the rest of us have to supplement them. So YES their is a taxpayer expense here. You also have to remember here, in a world that constantly talks about ‘Socialism’ this is exactly what this is. A $21 million dollar tax rebate to a private business is ‘Socialism’ and developer welfare.
I still believe the Bunker Ramp was stopped from moving forward because of this TIF and development. I haven’t been able to connect the dots yet, but it is highly suspicious that we stop the construction of a DT hotel then turn around and give this development a TIF. Things that make you go hmmmmm.
So now we have two parking ramps we don’t need that were directly and indirectly funded by taxpayers. I knew the council would support this, and it proves what I have known for a very long time, there isn’t one iota of fiscal responsibility when it comes to our city’s elected official’s decisions, it’s just more of sticking it to the little guy. Thanks for nothing!
Paying cash instead of borrowing for Sioux Falls’ next fire station, replacing the ski lift at Great Bear and repairing more roads are priorities for the mayor’s office as it looks to spend some leftover dollars from last year’s budget.
Mayor Paul TenHaken told the Argus Leader on Monday that he’ll ask the City Council to expedite several infrastructure projects using nearly $6.2 million in capital surplus funds while setting aside another $1.7 million in City Hall’s rainy-day fund.
Sure, his department heads should put together a list of needs, but that list should have been handed off to the council to make the decision in a work session. The rumor going around is that 3 of the RS5 met quietly with the mayor to concoct this proposal, and the others were blindsided by this.
When is this city (current mayor and council and past administrations) going to realize the separation of powers? It’s the mayor’s job to manage the city and abide by the rules and expenditures set forth by the council with guidance from department heads. If the mayor is going to do both jobs – why even have a council? Why not just declare him King so we can all do other things on Tuesday nights?
l3wis 
