May 2022
l3wis I’m flattered
I had to laugh that newly elected councilor stole my cartoon idea in this article;
“My joke is: a doctor, a lawyer and a preacher walked into a bar …” Barranco said of himself and his fellow incoming council members.
He also said this;
He also sees the commanding re-election of TenHaken – and the election of all candidates he endorsed – as a sign that residents are happy with how things are going and that “the city’s on track.”
Yes David, a very small percentage that bothered to vote in North Harrisburg are just tickled Taupe.
UPDATE: Smart Growth Sioux Falls has paid petitioners
The group trying to prevent Wholestone from coming has hired the same group of folks who did the Recreational MJ petition drive. They are giving them until July to come up with around 5,000 valid signatures.
While I don’t take issue with paid petitioners, you would have thought this would have been a cakewalk to get volunteers.
We also have had no update of where the PAC is getting it’s funding.
UPDATE: I did get word last night as to who may be funding the group. While I can say it is probably reliable, I would rather wait until the campaign finance disclosures come out to verify it. It seems the motivation behind the petition drive isn’t about labor or housing shortages it is about . . . you guessed it, DEVELOPMENT. I guess the person(s) behind this has heavily invested in housing development in the area around the proposed plant. And who wants to live beside a poop factory? Remember folks, when these things come up it is always about money and not good government. I still question if they can even legally pass an ordinance like this due to constitutional property rights and the fact that Smithfields gets to remain open.
Still waiting word on who is heading up the opposition.
UPDATE: New Sioux Falls City Council already has tricks up their sleeves
At last night’s 1st meeting of the new council the games have already started. I would have suspected they at least waited for a couple of weeks since they haven’t even updated the council web page yet (As of 7 AM, 5/18). Maybe they didn’t want to change the website until later today, because if they changed it yesterday before they even had their first meeting it may appear the council was crying wolf 
The one thing I noticed is that the roll call changed. Normally in alphabetical order it now seems to be random, the roll went like this last night; Jensen, Merkouris, Neitzert, Selberg, Soehl, Starr, Barranco, Cole. While I am not sure why it was changed, I found it interesting they put the Jensen first and Barranco and Cole last. I think in the past I have noticed they will reverse the alphabetical order, but I have never seen it just be random. I guess if I was going to be a rubber stamp puppet I would want to be last also.
UPDATE: I inquired about the roll call to the city clerk, Tom Greco, he had a reasonable response;
Thanks for your e-mail. The roll call/vote order is rotated each meeting and Council Member Jensen was the next sitting member up on the rotation. It’s in alphabetical order only once every 8 meetings — the first person to vote at a meeting is moved to the end of the rotation for the next regular meeting. On June 7th, Council Member Merkouris will be first with Jensen at the end. It hasn’t been done in reverse order. Roll call and vote order for special and joint meetings stays the same as the Council Meeting held immediately prior to the special or joint meeting (e.g. the same roll call used last night will be used for next Tuesday’s joint meeting with Lincoln County.)
They also decided to re-elect Curt Soehl as chair and Jensen as vice-chair. While it is not unusual for boards to re-elect the same leadership from year to year (Minnehaha County Commission has done it several times) it is unusual for the this city council. I can’t remember when this council has ever re-elected leadership? The sad part was they passed up Pat Starr who has been on the council for 6 years and never served in leadership. They should have elected Jensen as Chair and Pat as vice-chair. As you can tell from watching the vote last night, this was all pre-determined probably through individual phone calls. You are going to see a lot of that moving forward.
The probable reason they kept leadership the same is to install Jensen as chair next year so that going into his re-election bid he can say he is the chair of the council. These folks are so predictable.
After watching the meeting last night I noticed a little frustration out of councilor Merkouris (when asking questions) and Barranco seemed bored to death. I also noticed our mayor had a smirk most of the meeting except when he said OMG into the microphone when someone came up for public input.
Newly elected Councilor already has an official photographer
Good thing, because image is everything!
Also throughout the installations, when Paul would introduce them, he would say who their guests were (namely campaign donors). This has never been done before except for introducing kids and spouses. Not sure why Matt Paulson and Leslee Unruh being guests for a particular candidate needed to be announced?
