The city is set to start the next phase of the Minnesota Avenue rebuild between 2nd Street and 7th Street this Spring. The project will be $15 Million+. In the process they wanted to put pavers along Minnesota like in front of the City Center, and they want the stone reset in front of the City Center. So an independent contractor suggested to the city that when they put the pavers down Minnesota and reset the ones at the City Center they should pour a concrete pad underneath so they can’t sink and weeds don’t grow in them. I think they even suggested the faux poured pavers that are on Phillips Avenue. Nope, I guess they are going to go old school and just put it on sand so it will have to be redone in 10 years.
While I was talking to this gentleman he went on another rant about the engineering department at the city. He said they come and go as they please and he said, ‘Good luck getting anyone on the phone down there or responding to voicemails.’ He said a lot of other unflattering things also. I joked with him, ‘I have been saying for years they should fire all the city engineers and just hire a purchasing agent to replace them.’ Right now all city engineers do is read and approve engineering reports from independent contractors. They also write the RFPs.
I asked him what he thought of my theory that the Feds threatened the city over funding if they didn’t approve the data center. He said that it was a possibility since every department in the city gets money from the Feds. He agreed with my theory, ‘What if the city does everything the Feds want them to do and they still cut our funding? Then what?’ The city should just prepare for the budget shortfall until 2028 and lay off any city employees who receives department funding thru the Feds. Also, it is Congress that controls the purse strings and last I checked we have 3 Republicans representing us in DC, are they going to allow this kind of bullying? Trump just stopped a water project in Colorado for 50K residents because he is mad about that stupid bitch who broke so many state election laws that she got 9 years in state prison and Trump has threatened to bust her out using the Military. Something about a tank ramming the jail. Crazy crap. So his threats of budget cuts? Who cares and let’s just hope he gets a new pharmacist soon.
As for the Data Center I have two friends that work in the industry in Sioux Falls, and they have been sending me different information on how they work etc. They said that most of the Data Centers in Sioux Falls are no more then 30 MW (that is the largest) this proposed Data Center is 500 MW. Look at the power generation capacity we have;
So where will this power come from? Good question.
Most Data Centers have Server Racks in them and even some of the bigger ones in Sioux Falls only have a handful of employees with half of them handling security and janitorial. This is a power cord for just ONE rack of servers. It is about 4x the diameter of of a 210 power cord.
I’m hoping the petition drive is successful in stopping this, but I still think it could be stopped with a court order.