May 2023

County Commission Elections Minnehaha County Sioux Falls

UPDATE: Does Minnehaha County Auditor’s petition ‘policy’ violate 1st Amendment Rights?

l3wis May 8, 2023 8Comments

UPDATE: There has been a rumor circulating that this all came about because a PETITIONER filed a protection order against a former Republican State Legislator. I’m not going to finger him until I know for sure, but it seems like his style since he is MAGA and supports abortion without protections. I guess he pushed a (pro-choice) petitioner and that is why they filed the order. But what is bizarre is that the petitioner was the one being harassed NOT the people walking by the petitioners. Maybe the county needs to have a policy that protects petitioners from MAGgots.

While I have heard from others that they were being ‘harassed’ by petitioners I personally never have. I either say yes or no and walk off. People who have the impression they are being harassed would have never signed your petition anyway.

Either way, petitioners have 1st Amendment rights to gather in public spaces, especially for petition gathering, the County Auditor thinks differently;

One will be in the Minnesota Avenue parking lot on the west side of the administration building, about 25 feet from the main entry where residents often enter to take care of automobile registration, voting and other county business.

The other will be adjacent to the county courthouse on the south sidewalk but away from the two stairways that lead to the main entryway.

I find it ironic those who claim to be on the side of Liberty, Freedom and Justice want to TRY to limit our Constitutional Rights. This is an obvious attempt at limiting petition gathering since this is one of the best places to gather signatures, and they know it.

I encourage any petitioner to ignore the rules and petition in front of the main entries and if threatened with arrest I would remind them you have a 1st Amendment Right to petition the government, especially on tax payer owned property. The County Commission and County Auditor do NOT have the constitutional authority to do this (that is why they call this a ‘policy’ and not a law or ordinance, because it is just a suggestion and they know it).

The County Commission ate it up and voted full authoritarian unanimously to limit the areas (FF: 24:00)

Paratransit SF City Council Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Transit Transportation

UPDATE: St. Cloud, MN bails on their On Demand Transit system (H/T-GFG)

l3wis May 7, 2023 3Comments

UPDATE: A South DaCola foot soldier sent me this information about a story he read in the St. Cloud local paper;

One of the highlights I picked up in a quick scan – the original fixed route service which was replaced had a ridership of 5 riders per hour. At the conclusion of the trial period (in late Dec 2019?), ridership for the On Demand version was 1/2 of the previous – 2.5 riders per hour.

Nonetheless, at that time, they continued the trial period in order to see if a different period of the calendar would yield different results.

Didn’t read/scan beyond that, but would surmise that they continued the trial, COVID-19 emerged (which wasn’t kind to public transportation of any type) and they finally decided, post COVID-19, that the On Demand model wasn’t working.

St. Cloud’s ON Demand system has been a pilot since 2019 (similar to Sioux Falls) and they decided to end it;

A temporary bus service in Sartell is coming to an end and a fixed route will replace the shared-ride service.

Metro Bus is sunsetting the ConneX on-demand service and resuming Fixed Route 32 starting on Sunday.

The pilot project was started in 2019 and extended several times before the decision was made to go back to the fixed route system for Sartell.

I tried to find some articles why they decided to ‘sunset’ the program but couldn’t really find anything (links are welcome in the comment section). My educated guess is that On Demand Transit doesn’t work well, isn’t efficient and leaves a lot of riders out of the equation.

The Sioux Falls City Council really needs to strap in and take a very active role in fixing our transit system in Sioux Falls. First call I would make as a councilor is to a city official with St. Cloud.

Elections SF School District Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls School Board Candidate Forum Tonight

l3wis May 4, 2023 7Comments

(An interesting moment in the video is when candidate Johnson didn’t know how to answer a question about the separation of church and state.)

The Greater Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce will host a School Board Candidate Forum on Thursday, May 4 from 6:30-7:30 p.m. at the school district’s Instructional Planning Center. This forum will feature Dawn Marie Johnson and Brian Mattson who are the two candidates actively running for one open seat on the Sioux Falls School Board.

The forum will be moderated by the League of Women Voters. Candidates will answer questions on their goals if they are elected.

This forum is free and open to the public. It will also be livestreamed on the Sioux Falls School District YouTube channel and KLRN TV- Midco cable channels 20 and 595.

(I voted yesterday early at the IPC. The person attending the voting told me they are getting 30-40 early voters per day. They are hand counting the vote, so I am sure whoever wins it will be by at least 80-90% of the vote 🙂

Uncategorized

DakotaNews Reporter goes full ‘Jerky Boys’

l3wis May 4, 2023 23Comments

While I have been laughing for about an hour, I do find this also damaging to journalists across the state;

Political reporter Austin Goss of Dakota News Now was arrested for making a prank phone call while impersonating Governor Kristi Noem.

While his employer hasn’t said whether they will or have terminated (he was removed from the bio page) Mr. Goss my assumption is he will probably get the boot (rumor has it he already has a job offer from another media organization in town that gives away free papers – Not the Shopping News or Tidbits).

He may have gotten the number from the Federal Data Breach but if he is the Capital reporter in Pierre for Dakota News, my assumption is he got the number directly from Noem (hopefully this comes up in the hearing).

While satire is allowable under the 1st Amendment it has to be reasonably recognized by most who are experiencing it. Impersonating others, especially elected officials without identifying yourself or the prank is against the law, or is it?

The unfortunate part, that is NOT funny, is this will have an affect on the trust elected officials have with the media. I don’t want to sound like some ‘fake news’ crier, but I have a feeling the anti-media wing-nuts in our state are going to use this to their advantage saying we can’t trust the media. It appears Mr. Goss used Noem’s number to call former GOP chair Dan Lederman. While he did identify the call as a prank, where Mr. Goss may have stumbled was impersonating Noem’s personal cell number.

The sad part is that will get turned into a political football about Federal Data breaches when this is really just about prank calls.

I have NO defense for Mr. Goss. He hurt his industry today, and not in a good way. So let’s have a laugh;

Censorship Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council Sioux Falls

UPDATE: Public inputers CENSORED at Sioux Falls City Council Meeting

l3wis May 2, 2023 9Comments

Besides the lack of open government and transparency the authoritarians running this city went full dictator tonight and shut off the audio of two public inputers (fast forward to the Lucky Lady Casino public input. During Sierra’s testimony, Pettigrew Neighborhood Association president, the last minute was shut off and the first minute of the next inputer. This wasn’t just shutting off the public input microphone, but the entire room was silent.

I’m not a videographer, but it was pretty obvious this was probably done intentionally and NOT a technical glitch.

UPDATE: The latest from the city is that someone ‘accidentally’ hit the button. I guess my question is who ‘accidentally’ turned the button back on 🙂

I noticed a few weeks ago that when David Z was giving one of his usual public inputs with his printed out slides that they did not show the slides in the video. Maybe that was a dry run?

This isn’t just an open meetings violation, BUT a clear violation of the 1st Amendment. Unless an inputer is cussing like a sailor or threatening elected officials, they have the right to say whatever they want to. The public doesn’t have to follow the decorum rules, even though they should, those rules are for those on the dais.

When local governments start censoring their citizens at public meetings we have serious issues with who is governing us.

UPDATE: MAYOR TENHAKEN ADMONISHES LEGACY DEVELOPMENT

During the debate over the casino issues last night Paul admonished Legacy Development for NOT selling the troubled property to the city three years ago when he met with them privately to buy the property.

I was told about the meeting three years ago, and from talking to a couple of different sources it seemed believable. I told a couple of different reporters with NO followup. I guess if you want to get the news around here you have to wait 3 years for the mayor to tell us about it.

My concern wasn’t the failed deal, my concern than and now is that the city should get out of the land speculation business and he shouldn’t be cutting real estate deals behind closed doors without the council being at the table.

The irony of this is that the city has plenty of ordinances and regulations on the books to take care of this property, they just have to stop deferring and start acting. Last night’s decision was easy. Apply the laws you currently have on the books to stop the short term problems and create a long term solution to the neighborhood problems.

YOU CAN DO BOTH AT THE SAME TIME!

I think one of the reasons the state isn’t building their one-stop facility DTSF is because they want to move those kind of services away from downtown.

Picture below was taken right after the city council meeting last night.

UPDATE: Does Minnehaha County Auditor’s petition ‘policy’ violate 1st Amendment Rights?

UPDATE: St. Cloud, MN bails on their On Demand Transit system (H/T-GFG)

Sioux Falls School Board Candidate Forum Tonight

DakotaNews Reporter goes full ‘Jerky Boys’

UPDATE: Public inputers CENSORED at Sioux Falls City Council Meeting

You Missed

UPDATE: Let Sioux Falls Vote! Sign Data Center petition!

Trust

I have been telling council this stuff for over a decade

First Ave Doc, many memories