So we have been seeing a lot of stories about abortion these days. From our governor proposing primitive and unconstitutional laws to protests from both sides of the aisle and rallies.
I guess my question is when is our local media going to pony up and just do a poll of South Dakota voters? Heck, they could even join forces and use the Poli-Sci departments at the public universities to help conduct it.
I think the results in South Dakota would be the same as the rest of the country. Most people support legal abortion as long as it is within a reasonable window of time.
I will tell you why the media won’t touch it, they like the controversy. Even though South Dakotans have voted twice to preserve prochoice in our state there seems to be this attitude in the media that we are split 50/50 on the topic. I don’t believe it for a moment.
• The Audit Committeehas finally released some audits, been awhile. On Spectra (the people who provide concessions to several city owned entertainment facilities) they found a ton of non-compliance especially with insurance requirements. On the Midco Aquatic Center they have seen an over 50% drop in attendance since 2019 and around a 40% drop in revenue. They were also non-compliant on several fronts and like the Spectra Audit it seems our own Finance Department is not doing regular checks of compliance. For Travel expenses there was several instances of non-compliance. $137,000 travel reimbursements paid directly to travelers (city employees). Many of these results don’t surprise me. I have said the City Manager (The Mayor) is running a rudderless ship and when you have a poor city manager, it results in poor management under that person.
• The Planning Commission has decided to go full rogue by putting every single item on the consent agenda this month. Now items can be pulled for discussion by the Commission or Individuals from the public but I find this startling considering that all items are recommended for approval by the Planning Department and I am sure several Commission Members will recuse due to conflicts. Folks, this is what true cruise control government looks like. I am still puzzled why we even have a Planning Commission.
City Attorney’s office, Engagement Agreement for Human Relations Commission Review, Cadwell Sanford Deibert & Garry, LLP, Not to exceed $5,000
A concerned citizen asked a city councilor to pull this from the agenda for discussion and he not only refused to pull it, he refused to tell the citizen what it was about. Mind you, this is on a publicly posted agenda.
So why is an outside law firm reviewing the Human Relations Commission. I don’t know, but let’s make some guesses;
• The attorney running the department mysteriously disappeared and the replacement left to work for the county. Why?
• There has been several accusations that the commission (city) has been dismissing complaints for no reason.
• Was there a Federal complaint filed? The commission probably is funded by some Federal grants and has to follow certain Federal rules when it comes to the appeals.
As I understand it another city councilor has agreed to pull it from the consent agenda and have some one from the administration explain what this review is about.
At this point I won’t speculate, because I am just as curious as you.
Besides the fact that he seems to be lobbying for the State of Iowa at the detriment of South Dakotans, why is he presenting this to the Minnehaha CC?
REGULAR BUSINESS: 10) Briefing on the Summit Carbon Solutions Pipeline – Dan Lederman
A MC Commissioner I talked with has NO idea what Iowa Dan will be presenting, but he has a pretty good guess;
Summit Carbon Solutions, the Alden company owned by Bruce Rastetter’s Summit Agricultural Group, proposes building a 710-mile underground pipeline that would extend into or through 30 of the state’s 99 counties.
Summit plans to capture the carbon dioxide emissions from ethanol and other industrial agricultural plants before they’re released into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. The company will compress the emissions into a liquid so it can be transported to North Dakota, where it will be injected in underground rock formations for permanent storage.
So how do you get this crud to North Dakota? Well, you would most likely have to build a pipeline from Iowa through South Dakota. Bring in Iowa Dan.
The company says it has agreements to sequester carbon emissions from 31 Midwestern ethanol plants. In addition to Iowa — the nation’s largest producer of ethanol — Summit Carbon plans to run the pipeline into Nebraska, Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota.
While some would argue this is a great idea I have an even better one, stop using fossil fuels and ethanol and invest in clean energy. The technology already exists where you could run most if not all autos, trucks, semis and trains on electric and they are working on the technology for airplanes also. The electricity could come from investing in wind, solar, hydro and even nuclear energy. We don’t need to make more bio fuels which I have argued takes food out of hungry mouths and doesn’t produce enough return on energy. Ethanol is a big scam, always has been.
But I still wonder why the Chair of the SD GOP is promoting an Iowa business that is interested in running a hazardous waste pipeline through our state. I have argued for a long time that South Dakota Republican lawmakers are consistently working against the interests of hard working residents and baffled why they keep getting elected and now the leader of that party in South Dakota is proving that once again.
I was a little surprised that a former state legislator and current city councilor could be so confused about how the city can apply TIFs. During his interview on KELO AM (Sept 21) Jensen says the city should use TIFs for affordable and accessible housing. Imagine my surprise, especially since Jensen gleefully voted for 3 TIFs totaling $144 million that have ZERO to do with affordable housing. But what he said about what needs to change really surprised me even more. Jensen said the state has to change laws in order to do that. Huh?
While the State could certainly do that, it is not necessary. As I have proposed, with Home Rule we can make our charter stricter than State Law, we just cannot violate the law;
Application for TIF will only be accepted for projects that will eliminate blight, build density in the core, and simultaneously provide affordable and workforce housing. Home rule charter allows the city to be stricter than state law.
There are three ways we could go about this change. The easiest would be the council just proposing the change and voting on it. That would be as simple as a presentation about the change and a 1st and 2nd reading. The next easiest would be my proposal above and have the CRC put the change on the ballot and let the voters make that change. There is also a 3rd option which would be the hardest and that would be to do a petition drive to get it on the ballot.
This is why Jensen’s statement baffles me. The Council and himself already have the power to make this change, we don’t have to wait for the legislature to do something. And if he really believed that TIFs should only be applied this way why did he vote for three that have to do with parking ramps, slush funds and Korean owned egg roll factories?
Talking out of both sides of your butt must be a vampire thing.
UPDATE: Jensen also touches on this during inside Town Hall. Alex offers some strange solutions to our housing shortages;
• Encourage people to live in our neighboring small communities. So basically he is telling people to come to SE South Dakota to work in Sioux Falls, but BTW, we don’t have any room for you in our town. So once you punch out, and go home please take those wages you made in Sioux Falls and pay your taxes in Tea or Brandon or Crooks.
I have suggested for over a decade you could do a pilot program in a core neighborhood in a 4-6 block radius. The city would fix the roads, water, sewer, curb, gutter, city owned sidewalks and lighting. You then could get the residents and property owners in that sector to sign onto a group tax incentive program thru community development to fix up the properties. Depending on income levels the help could be tax rebates or NO or LOW interest loans. As we have seen, the Mayor already has the discretionary power to that.
• Senator Jack Kolbeck brought up TIFs. Either Jack is naive or he is in on the scam, but he wants to get the TIF down to 0% for developers and eliminate excise taxes for them. He then says “So they can pass the savings down to the consumer/renter.” The tired old Reaganomics argument of trickle down. If you are giving the tax cut to the developer, the developer or contractor will simply put that money in their pocket. They know with the demand of housing in Sioux Falls they have NO reason to pass ‘savings’ on down to the consumer. The tax breaks should go to the consumer once the home is purchased. Trickle down DOES NOT WORK, we have proof of this with the enormous income gap that was created by these horrible policies.
• Jack also brings up expanding the prison built homes project to Sioux Falls prison. While I am all for this program, I think the inmates should get paid better for it, I also think they should have job guarantees in the industry when they get out and work it into their probation or parole.
I’m not saying the city needs to do this all at once or even change existing ordinances, just try a pilot program based on existing zoning and laws. Shape Places already fixed a hurdle that allows residential areas like this to either fix up or expand their properties. This isn’t rocket science folks. It’s what I told a friend the other day about the issues at the Dudley House. We have this desire in local government to re-invent the wheel and make things complicated while giving them fancy names. We don’t have to do that, we can get simple straight forward ideas from other communities on what works and we don’t even need to travel or pick up a phone to do it. You can get online and see thousands of projects. It just takes time, research and google. When I used to be a full-time graphic designer a fellow designer told me his secret to being so good, ‘90% of my ideas are stolen’.
l3wis 
