November 2025

1st Amendment Public Utilities Public Works Sioux Falls

UPDATE: Cry me a river . . . of crap

l3wis November 4, 2025 6Comments

UPDATE: What’s with all the crying these days? I see he goes to same stylist as Sue Peterson. The intro was priceless, ‘Known to many as Mayor Mike’. Hey, Buddy, you lost that title 7 years ago, and you ain’t getting it back.

Public Works director, Cotter, did learn something from Huether, turn on the water works, uh I mean sewer works. No doubt it was an exhaustive project for Cotter, over 270 days of construction. But I am not sure it is worth crying about. Mr. Cotter gets paid $232K a year + benefits. We pay these wages because it is important job and it is hard. I compliment Cotter on getting this done, but it is his job. I also fault Cotter for not taking a firmer stand with Mike on the Sewer expansion. This project was supposed to be done BEFORE the Event Center and if we would have gone that route you would have saved taxpayers over $50 million in capital expenses and millions in interest payments, but Mike wanted that tin can so bad he had Cotter bury the project and any discussions about it. Cotter should have got in front of the council and pushed them to implement the project before the Event Center. So I guess it was appropriate to cry. While the project was a success, it would have been a heckuva a lot cheaper if we would have started it 10 years ago.

Rhoden spoke briefly at the end of the presser, and he was the only one that said anything that made sense. He basically said, these are the kind of (infrastructure) projects the government is setup to take care of. I agree, I have often said SF out of control spending could be tapered back by simply dedicating tax dollars to NEEDS not WANTS.

And now that the sewer plant is finished, get ready for the $30 million dollar bond next year to make repairs to the Denty. It’s coming.

WHEN YOU BUY A NEW CAR YOU HAVE TO BUILD A GARAGE FOR IT

I guess the Public Works department is angling for a new garage to house the new snow plows. The rumor is a building 100 x 300 FT. building. This should come as no surprise. They bought all these maintainers now they have to store them somewhere. Funny how the finance director didn’t mention this when he wanted the council to buy the maintainers. Even a pole barn that size will be millions. It reminds me of the applicant who showed up to the Zoning Board for an adjustment on his garage. He wanted to extend his garage 3 feet in the front. When asked his reason he said, “I bought a new truck and it doesn’t fit in the garage.” 🙂

1st Amendment Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council Sioux Falls

The City of Sioux Falls needs a Public Information Officer

l3wis November 4, 2025 3Comments

After having several individual discussions with councilors over the past few months about public input, libel and the city’s inability to live stream a video in YouTube it all came to a head at tonight’s meeting.

Mayoral Candidate David Z. came to the podium tonight and asked for some public information. He got nowhere and the council seemed confused also. I know I mentioned this awhile back, but the solution to these problems with transparency is for the city to hire a full-time public information officer who works for 3 entities; Law Office, City Council and Mayor’s Office. It would be preferable that this person had a law degree or is a paralegal. They would also have to have some marketing bonafides. Either way, this person would be the liaison to the media and the public when it comes to information. They would manage all pressers, media inquiries, constituent concerns, etc. They would also manage all of the city’s meetings making sure they are noticed correctly and the right materials are posted with the agenda. I would also like them to take on a side project of creating an information tab on the city’s website that makes it easy to find information, preferably on the front page (the current search engine is a gigantic POS*).

I used to think that many city employees just don’t care about following open meeting laws so they don’t.

But it is NOT that.

As I understand it, each department manager is responsible for their meeting’s agenda and with their other duties, they really shouldn’t be asked to be open government experts. I just think they don’t have anyone guiding them to do the right thing. If you had one or even two people in the city who were in charge of this, it would take a lot of stress off of these directors and managers that have other important work to do besides looking up open meeting laws.

*I don’t use the city’s website search engine, I learned another trick that works better; When you open Google type in; siouxfalls.gov: topic. In other words type the topic you are searching for like ‘building permits’. It isn’t perfect but it works much better then the city’s website. Good thing we paid almost $1 million for the upgraded website. We got taken to the cleaners.

1st Amendment County Commission Dean Karsky Minnehaha County Open Government Open Meetings

Minnehaha County Commission boots elderly couple for asking a question

l3wis November 4, 2025 0Comments

Trust me, I am not fan of this couple who want to take us back to 1952;

In the video the couple wanted an answer to a simple question, “How much is the extra holiday pay costing county taxpayers.” Of course, no answer, because that would mean collaborative and open government. Even a commissioner asked Tom Greco, county administrator, what the amount was and still did not get an answer from Tom. It’s not a hard question. What is your daily receipts on salaries? That is the magic number. I’m sure almost everyone on that dais knows what it costs to pay salaries for a day at the county. And I agree with the couple that the policy of not answering taxpayer questions needs to end. These are public meetings. Do you understand what the word ‘public’ means? Now this couple can be a bit crazy. They want us to go to hand counting which is less reliable and takes longer, they usually cuss and demean the commissioners, and usually something racist comes from their mouths, as today the man decided to make fun of Juneteenth in this testimony saying, “Nobody knows what the Hell that is.” I’m pretty sure some African Americans in our community could fill you in. Either way, asking a question, saying stupid Trump garbage, or going over your time by a couple of seconds doesn’t permit you to eject someone from a meeting, that is violation of their 1st Amendment rights. Sure, you can ask them to sit down and stop swearing, but you can’t kick them out because you don’t like the questions they ask. The irony is, the question still wasn’t answered. I hope that he sues the county for 1st amendment violations, and I can’t believe an officer went along with it. I know that the (previous) security at city council meetings quit because the mayor wanted them to arrest and remove people who were saying things he didn’t like and they refused telling him that is a 1st Amendment violation. I think Karsky is going to be regretting his decision when the county is dowling out millions in a 1st Amendment suit to a nutty Trumper.

I also want to add, this couple who look like they are in their 70s, never physically threatened the commission or used any threatening language, besides it being a ‘sh!t show’ which it is.

1st Amendment County Commission Downtown Sioux Falls Elections Homeless Lincoln County Minnehaha County SF City Council SF School Board Member SF School District Sioux Falls

We lack TRANSPARENCY in local government

l3wis November 3, 2025 4Comments

I agree with Joe that there is a lack of leadership, experience, accountability, common sense and diligence;

That kind of leadership requires listening, relationship-building, and the willingness to work together. It means re-establishing trust among institutions that have drifted apart and reminding everyone that Sioux Falls’ success has always come from collaboration, not isolation.

Many of these leadership issues can be solved with one word; TRANSPARENCY. When you have a government that is open to the public’s ideas by bringing them along with the process you get more involvement and when the public is more involved you have a better planned community. The problem with local government on all levels isn’t a lack of leadership or even laziness it’s a lack of openness and accountability. You could have 9 monkeys sitting on the dais and the city would still run incredibly well because of transparency. I am of the position that it doesn’t matter who is on that dais, as another realtor announces a run for council today, if we have folks that are willing to open the books and bring the public along that is ALL the leadership you need. Because real leaders are honest, open and accountable.

THE SOLUTION TO THE TRANSIENT PROBLEM IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES

After reading this article last night about transients at the downtown library I sent this email to Jodi;

I am putting an invitation to you and a companion to ride on the back of my pedi-cab on a weeknight DTSF after dark, I will take you to all the places transients congregate and you can see just how serious it is.

But what I found fascinating about the article is Police Chief Thum offering a solution to the problem without realizing it;

My point is not to lack compassion for those who probably could benefit from a quiet, safe place to spend their day. Ideally, we’d find something more productive for people to do in such a place — maybe we offer classes or even the chance to create art — but if safe shelter with a way to charge a phone is really all people are looking for, maybe we need to create that somewhere other than the library.

We need the library to function as it was intended to promote literacy and access to information and related resources, not as a social services agency.

At the top of the post I talked about common sense in government. Are you listening to what you are saying? Maybe we need a temporary shelter? It is pretty obvious to me that we need a temporary shelter this winter for these folks where they can stay 24/7 if they wish. Will it cost money? Sure, but the alternative is paying for ER visits when we are scraping them from the cold concrete in a parking ramp which costs way more then just funding a facility for the winter months. I would also hand every single one of them a bus ticket when they arrive at the shelter if they desire to go home.

This is what I mean when it comes to leadership. You obviously see the issue, you also obviously see the solution, so why not fix it?

UPDATE: Cry me a river . . . of crap

The City of Sioux Falls needs a Public Information Officer

Minnehaha County Commission boots elderly couple for asking a question

We lack TRANSPARENCY in local government

You Missed

UPDATE: The more things change, the more they stay the same

UPDATE II: Sioux Falls City Councilor could be facing ethics violations after tonight’s vote on Tre Ministries project

UPDATE: City Council Agenda (Dec 2-3)

Seems we are a we bit behind on snow plowing