This has been out for a few weeks, but I thought I would post today right after I listened to Trump’s live CPAC speech. The one thing I have learned about either reading poetry, or philosophy or even political analogy is that less is more. Trump doesn’t understand this, but Chapelle does.
Informational Meeting • Mar 2 • 4 PM
Presentations;
• Downtown Sioux Falls (DTSF) and South Eastern Council of Governments (SECOG) General Updates
• Tuthill Park House Project Status Update
Regular Meeting • Mar 2 • 6 PM
Item #6, Sub Items 17 & 42 totaling $466K to the Washington Pavilion in the form of boiler upgrades and cornice design. Ironically I just brought this up 2 weeks ago at the last city council meeting. While we throw money at the Pavilion like it is confetti we debate for months about the funding of a 100 year old institution. As for the cornice design costs, $250k is an atrocious amount of money to spend on design and further proof of the foolish ways the city spends its money. The rumor going around is the roof replacement will cost us $4 million.
Sub Item #20, Provide consultation and guidance in the areas of cultural
work, organizational alignment and strategy development Fees are established on a per project basis, $375/per hour fee, Dr. Trish Holliday. I’m guessing this contract is with this HR consulting company;
Trish is founding partner with Lucinda Kenning of the HR consulting company, Holliday│Kenning. Both partners are HR executives in the industry and provide leaders in the private and public sectors with an organizational playbook that focuses on growing leaders and driving performance. The Holliday│Kenning framework offers organizations and its leaders a Playbook with five distinct approaches (plays) that are critical for a winning workplace that attracts and retains top talent and drives cultural transformation.
While we know the city hires consultants, I find it troubling we have to hire a cultural HR consultant from Tennessee after Mayor TenHaken convinced the city council we needed a full-time Director of Culture. So what is her job? Rana DeBoer gets paid $117K a year to hire outside consultants to tell her what to do?
Item #34 & 43, 2nd Reading: AN ORDINANCE OF THE CITY OF SIOUX FALLS, SD, ESTABLISHING THE TAX INCREMENT REVENUES TO BE COLLECTED AND AUTHORIZING THE PAYMENT OF TAX INCREMENT REVENUES TO SIOUX FALLS DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION, INC., IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT FOR TAX INCREMENTAL DISTRICT NO. TWENTY-THREE, CITY OF SIOUX FALLS. I have no doubt that this will pass the council Tuesday night with at least 6 votes. I think there will be an attempt at amending the $30 million slush fund portion of it, but even if the amendment passes it will just be some kind of weak oversight commission. I have no doubt in my mind passing this TIF will send a very dangerous economic precedent in our city.
Item #41, 1st Reading: 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. The city council is looking to extend the mask mandate. It will be interesting to see if this passes in 2nd reading.
Item #42, 1st Reading: AN ORDINANCE OF THE CITY OF SIOUX FALLS, SD, REPEALING ORDINANCE NO. 31-20 AUTHORIZING INTERIM REVISIONS TO CHAPTER 57 OF THE CODE OF ORDINANCES OF SIOUX FALLS, SD, PERTAINING TO THE NOVEL CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19). This is a repeal of the pointless emergency ordinance that required homeowners to bring their garbage cans to curbside for pickup. Of course, when this went into place it was about the safety of the garbage hauler workers, which I agree with, but the haulers never passed the labor cost savings onto the customers and many customers (mostly senior) have been complaining about hauling there cans to the curbside and getting NO discount to do so. I have no doubt this will pass 2nd reading, but the discussion or debate from the industry should be interesting, I’m sure they will respond with rate hikes, which furthers my argument that we need public garbage service.
Planning Commission • Mar 3 • 6 PM
Item 2 I, Initial Development Plan Amendment for Augustana, While no street closures are involved with the PUD yet, Augustana has been wanting to close Grange at 33rd so they can use the land as part of the campus.
Item 5 D, AN ORDINANCE OF THE CITY OF SIOUX FALLS, SD, AMENDING THE CODE OF ORDINANCES OF THE CITY BY AMENDING CHAPTER 160: ZONING BY ADDING SUBCHAPTER ORIGINAL ART MURALS AND AMENDING SECTIONS 160.005 AND 160.578. It seems the city is finally prepared to except mural art on businesses. Someone must have told city hall that it is 2021 and not 1951. All joking aside, this is good and long overdue.
Margaret nailed Kristi with this, “I know you are conservative and you care about the sanctity of life, so how can you justify making decisions that put the health of your constituents at risk?” Noem’s response was to ask other governors that question, even though Margaret reminded her several times that she was asking Noem the question, right now, since she was on the show (that’s kind of how interviews work).
We know the real answer to that question, Conservatives only care about you before you are born, once you are out, you are on your own.
As we heard recently, the city paid out $500K for the death of a toddler at Falls Park. We also know that the city has said in the past that they have pending lawsuits when it comes to the Bunker Ramp fiasco and the failed HVAC at the administration building. It would be nice to at least get an update as to where we are right now with them.
But according to city hall moles, the city came to a quasi-settlement with a contractor over a Sioux Falls Parks & Rec facility. I have my guesses what that settlement was and the said facility, but since I don’t know specifically from my sources the name, I will let you speculate.
But I asked this person, “If state law now dictates that settlements must be revealed, why hasn’t the city told the public?”
The response was, “First, the contractor was found liable, so they had to award the city for their failures and secondly it wasn’t a ‘cash’ settlement”
The rumor is the contractor had to fix their screw-up instead of paying the city to fix it with another contractor so no actual money was transferred.
So I guess the argument is the city doesn’t have to reveal this settlement because no money was exchanged.
I think that is a stretch;
Section 1-27-1.23 – Settlement agreements to be public records
An agency of the state or a political subdivision may not enter into a settlement agreement with a party to any civil action or proceeding involving a claim for monetary damages or equitable relief in which the settlement agreement requires nondisclosure or confidentiality of the terms of the settlement.Â
So why is the city covering this up? Especially since the city, in this case, was awarded a settlement? I would think the city attorney’s office would love to tell the public about this win? Who are they protecting?
Well, we all know that politicians like to fib a little to make themselves look good, it doesn’t matter what stripe they are from. But Noem really stretches the truth during her speech at CPAC today. Here are some highlights;
• She said South Dakota was the only state not to order businesses or churches to close or people wear masks. While there was NO directive from her office, cities across the state passed mandates on masks and businesses, and ironically those communities saw their cases drop.
• She said she didn’t define what an essential business is. But the CDC and Feds did, and so did several cities in South Dakota.
• She talked about keeping the schools open. While this is true, it had little to do with keeping them in the classroom it had to do with the lousy broadband and internet access across the state. Kudos to Mayor TenHaken for making this a recent priority in Sioux Falls. Once again local government has to step up to make up for her lack of leadership.
• She also took a dig at Dr. Fauci about how he was wrong about hospital capacity and how South Dakota managed it well. Quite the opposite, while we dodged a bullet, the major hospitals in the state had to transport patients out of state because of capacity issues, some dying later and many nursing homes became covid death camps. In fact one of the reasons South Dakota ranks 7th in the nation for deaths is because of the elderly deaths at nursing homes.
• She claims the media lied about how bad it got with Covid in the state. Remember because of the Smithfield outbreak due to the lack of the SD Department of Health, the Sioux Falls Department of Health and at first the CDC not mandating safe working procedures it was the number one hotspot in the nation. I also think if that outbreak didn’t happen, our Covid numbers probably would have been manageable. Her and Mayor Stoneless did eventually blame it on poor hygiene of immigrants. Noem seems to think the best way to achieve Liberty and Freedom is by doing nothing.
• She claims that our economy in South Dakota is booming. Sure, if you are rich. Instead giving the Federal Covid money to individuals or other Covid prevention and healthcare (like public vaccination sites), she handed it out to businesses, like CBD stores and Go-Kart tracks. Over 70% of South Dakotans make under a living wage and of that 70% many are living in poverty. State Government in South Dakota is booming because the Feds bailed out the state and she handed the money over to business owners that have NO intention of trickling it down to their employees. South Dakota has one of the highest number of working moms and people with more than one job.
• She continues to push the big lie about all the freedom and RIGHTS we have in South Dakota, yet Noem won’t tell us how she spends our money on things like security and plane trips, her and the legislature continue to try to overturn the will of the voters when it comes to the initiative process or the right to have an abortion, she has dismantled regulation that would keep our waterways safe from CAFO’s and runoff, we also have very few worker rights or proper safety regulation and when she had an opportunity to extend special unemployment benefits to South Dakotans she said ‘No Thank You’. As I told someone the other day, we have so much FREEDOM in South Dakota, it may just kill us.
• She also says the only way to change things in this country is by electing conservative leaders. As I pointed out before the November election, we tried a Republican Senate and President the last four years and NOTHING was accomplished, except more division, chaos, racism and a crumbling healthcare system. If this is your idea of great leadership from conservatives you really need to see a shrink. More of the same isn’t the answer, I think almost 80 million voters sent that clear message.
• She finishes by telling her famous BS story about how she took over the family business and turned it around. She never finishes the story by telling people the millions in farm subsidies she has received from you and me, the taxpayers.
Kristi may fart some lines at this get together about the greatness of conservatism, but secretly she is one of the biggest socialists in the Republican Party never missing an opportunity to handout taxpayer funded welfare to herself and her big business supporters in the state while keeping the rest of us in the gutter.
l3wis