City of Sioux Falls drops the ball on code enforcement . . . again

As you know I have been encouraging the city for over a decade to tear down the MX liquor property at 15th and Cliff. I was happy to hear they were finally moving forward. They tore down MX and an abandoned house but gave the property owner a couple more months to fix up the two remaining houses. He has done nothing, and the deadlines have passed and the houses still sit there rotting (literally).

On top of that, I have contacted 3 city councilors and someone at public works (demolition) about why these properties have NOT been demolished yet . . . crickets. Which tells me they plan to do nothing. And they wonder why I call them incompetent?

But it gets even better.

(Yes, the power pole is hanging at an angle with extremely heavy transformers on top)

One of my neighbors noticed that a tree in the backyard of one of the dump houses broke and landed on the garage and a power pole, bending the pole and some of the equipment on the pole (this pole provides power to Century Business Products). So my neighbor, being the good gent he is, called the non-emergency police line to tell them about it and his concern for a fire being sparked. So a couple of minutes later he was standing in his front yard and he saw a fire truck pull up, the driver pointed out the window, talked to the other firefighter for about a minute and drove off. My neighbor was called back and told that Excel and the SFFD can’t do anything because it is on private property. HUH? Excel OWNS the pole, not the private property owner. They have a thing called an easement.

It’s time to bulldoze these places before an electrical fire, or worse breaks out. But I am not holding my breath. I told my neighbor we may wake up one morning and the houses will have collapsed into the basements and it would take another 10 years before the city would come and clean it up. If you ain’t in the Jones neighborhood in Sioux Falls, yah don’t matter.