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.