January 2025

Pools, Handouts, Crime, Studies & Lenin’s Tomb of Dead Monkeys

l3wis January 12, 2025 7Comments

Well it took a lot of hand wringing, two city councils and over a year to figure out the pool bonds;

An ordinance of the City of Sioux Falls authorizing the City to issue bonds backed and repaid by the City’s existing 2nd penny sales tax to utilize for $68,000,000 in parks and recreation improvements at the Westside Recreation Center, Kuehn Park, and Frank Olson Park.

They could have just put it to a public bond vote last spring, but that would have taken vision and leadership two attributes this current city government can’t wrap their heads around. I’ve told people it likely would have passed by over 60% of the vote. The argument for the new expenditures is about as laughable as it gets. If you were to put it to a bond vote you would get the answer you are looking for instead of speculating we are short (public) indoor recreation facilities. We are NOT short. We have more indoor (private) recreation then any city our size probably in the nation. Just do a google search, with new places being built every day! The new hobby lobby will be a gigantic indoor rec facility, privately owned and operated. It reminds me of the building permit argument, ‘Look! Look! We are over a Billion on permits, oh, and half that money is coming from you.’ We have plenty of private indoor rec space we don’t need to compete with them.

More handouts to the lobbyists (Item #13):

The proposed supplemental appropriation provides South Dakota Trade $100,000 to support its operations in 2025.

Well, I saw this coming a mile away, a lobbyist shows up to an informational, cracks a few jokes with the councilors and the next thing you know they have $100K in their pockets. I find it ironic we have to give an organization money that essentially represents importers and exporters in our state that are transferring millions in goods each year . . . maybe they need to be asking their members for the money instead of the taxpayers of Sioux Falls? Just a thought.

CRIME TRENDS CAN’T BE IGNORED

Jodi wrote this article in 2018, but it kind of rings true today.

TRUMP ISN’T EVEN QUALIFIED TO CLEAN A TOILET

I joked with someone that even though a convicted felon can become president they still couldn’t pass a Federal background check required before you could become a janitor in a government building. That’s right folks, the guy cleaning your toilet has more integrity and government clearance then the man in the corner office. Kind of reminds you of the public sector.

DUSTY MONKEYS AND THAT HUNCHBACK

It seems the city is ready to send most of Lenin’s tomb to Notre Dame. I contacted the department that would be taking on the collection and told them to request the origins of each of the animals before taking them. Since many are endangered I told them it would be ethically wise to see if any of the animals were taken illegally or poached and it would be a bit embarrassing for them to be displaying animals that were taken in this way.

LONG OVERDUE STUDY OF RAIL TRAFFIC IN SIOUX FALLS

The Federal Railroad Administration is giving the South Dakota DOT $1 million for an analysis and crossing safety study in the Sioux Falls area.

Hopefully this will result in many of the crossings DTSF to be closed and rerouted. We have far too much train traffic DTSF and I’m glad to see the agency in charge of regulating them will actually be regulating them.