Noem dodges Bill Maher interview
l3wis While Bill was doing a parody of GOP books, he mentions to the panel that he had Noem booked to be on the show next week and she bailed.
August 2022
Homeless Task Force meeting
I have a few takeaways from the meeting;
• There needs to be more felon friendly efficiency options for transitional housing. Regular market rate apartments are just too expensive right now for people looking for transitional housing.
• There needs to be officers dedicated to helping the homeless community.
• Religious discrimination needs to end (I wasn’t quite certain how often this actually happens, but needs to be looked at.)
• The most surprising thing I heard was that the different organizations, while somewhat working together, don’t have the infrastructure set up to work together on a more regular basis because their missions are all different. I think they work really hard to work together, but it seems it is all on a volunteer basis and they are NOT mandating they work together.
At the end of the meeting I heard member Michelle Erpenbach ask Chair Merkouris,
“So the work sessions will not be recorded?”
It cut off before he answered her. I have reached out to Rich and told him that the meetings need to live stream, because waiting 2 1/2 days for a meeting to post to YouTube just doesn’t cut it for transparency. I am not sure why this committee or board meeting is any different, in fact, I think this is a very important board, and they really need to approach this with transparency. Nothing gets solved in the dark.
The next meeting is Monday at 7 PM.
Sioux Falls City Council Budget Hearings
In the first city council budget hearing for 2022 there are some curious slides in the presentation. The meeting started at 3:00 PM, and the Chair, Councilor Soehl said that the cutoff time was 5:20 PM and if the council cannot get their questions in before that time they can reach out to department heads on their own time. The problem with that is that the public will not hear the questions and answers since there are NO ordinances that says this kind of communication should be shared with the public. It is also curious because the council has been told on several occasions that they are NOT allowed to contact department heads without permission from the mayor’s office, which is well within the charter guidelines. If the council has questions, they should be in a public forum and not behind closed doors. The solution would be recessing the meeting at 5:20 and allowing more questions to be asked in a public forum at a future meeting.
Let’s first look at per capita debt;
While I do not contend that ‘city debt’ is probably spot on, this does NOT include residents of Sioux Falls Minnehaha and Lincoln County debt, or school district debt which includes the Harrisburg and Sioux Falls debt.
This slide was actually GREAT NEWS;
I have known for a long time that the city’s turnover is extremely low, which is fantastic! I know many former and current city employees, they all tell me it is a great job, great benefits and competitive pay. I have always pushed back that city employees are fishing for a job in the private sector. The above slide proves otherwise. Working for the city in the public sector is a wonderful career and the stats prove it. Nobody is jumping ship for better opportunities. The administration has created a crisis that does NOT exist.
The mayor is proposing some strange new positions;
I have said that I do not oppose this position, but I need more details of what they are going to do. The city has always had a person in the planning department that is the contact for arts, but now they think they need a full-time person. This is probably coming from the Bloomberg foundation, many cities have these type of positions. It is how they are applied and what kind of decision making authority they have.
This position really had me curious;
The funny part about this is that the position already exists, it’s called THE MAYOR! The mayor should be the person pushing special projects, that is literally their job! The mayor has plenty of support staff to assist them with research, they don’t need another deputy mayor.
Minnehaha County Commission denies public input on CO2 pipeline
Besides the fact that the commission gave the green light for the pipeline to move forward (4-1 vote, Barth dissented) they also told the attendees there would be NO public input because the chair said it ‘wasn’t a public hearing.’ Ok, what the Hell would you call a public meeting with a posted agenda item? A church potluck?
14) Consider a Temporary Zoning Ordinance on Gas and Liquid Transmission Pipelines
They did follow state law by allowing general public input at the beginning of the meeting, but you are NOT allowed to comment on agenda items. I would encourage attendees to file an open meetings violation against the commission for denying them their 1st Amendment Rights and the use of Prior Restraint by the Chair. Barth asked for public input and the chair said they have pretty much heard enough thru phone calls and emails. So are those emails and phone calls going to be posted online so people can see those conversations?
City of Sioux Falls and Minnehaha County put on notice for high speed pursuit and accident
A 321 notice is a public record and is used to make a party aware that they may be sued. According to the notice, the victim is accusing that the Sheriff’s Department and Police Department of wrongfully pursuing a vehicle and causing an accident (Entire Document)
Since this may be pending litigation, I am not sure what exactly happened BUT I have seen police cars in Sioux Falls speeding thru traffic without sirens or lights on and wondered why.
