1st Amendment

Mayor TenHaken has approved $100 million in professional contracts w/o an RFP (request for proposal)

So amazing when you hear a councilor spout off about something NO ONE in the public was aware of. So Curtis the Blurtist decided to go off about how the council was left out of negotiations on the ambulance service, and to be quite honest, this is a bad path, and I 100% agree with him. We need to implement a municipal ambulance service. We are already doing it (SFFD) and we are getting F’ing zero ROI of assisted calls. This isn’t rocket science. You equip all the fire stations with ambulances and EMT’s. You give them union benefits and pay, and you hire a 3rd party insurance collector for revenue. It baffles me we have a contract with a company that literally relies on taxpayer funded EMT services to assist them and we get ZERO in return. Even councilor Soehl brought up that we should explore this, because the current setup with the fire department is f’d (because they are the first responders to calls, and basically hand off the patient to a taxi service. Oh, and I have witnessed it. Rode past emergency situations and the only EMT’s on scene are SFFD. And they literally prepare the patient for transfer and the ambulance shows up, and the SFFD puts the patient in the ambulance. It is a f’ing joke.)

But back to the RFP’s. Tonight while Soehl was ranting about RFP’s and other contracts he said this;

“Mayor TenHaken has approved $100 Million in NON RFP contracts since he has been mayor.”

WOW! And you waited seven years to tell us this!!!!!!???

First, some clarity. RFP’s are proposals sent out to potential professional contractors, they submit their bids and low (but qualified) usually wins. But in a weird rule in the charter (Munson was guilty of this a lot) the mayor can override any RFP and pick the contractor of their choice. I’m ok with this rule, BUT, you must first put out a bid for qualified contractors.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about city government is NOT corrupt. But when our mayor hands out millions to his buddies without constituent knowledge, there is only one word for it; CORRUPTION! and maybe a couple more like integrity and ethics?

Poops, I have always known you were corrupt, but this puts the nail in the coffin. WOW!

And Curt, thanks for the Rex Rolfing dented siding moment. And if you knew the mayor was this corrupt, what did you do about it? Chirp. Chirp.

Also, there was a city council joint meeting with the Laughing Waters County Commission. Doesn’t matter what happened, but this hot mic from a commissioner made me laugh after the commission approved the denial and awaiting the council to do the same. Well apparently the discussion irked a county commissioner as you could here her say into a hot mic, “If the council votes against this I am going to lose it.” (or something like that, it was fuzzy, but understandable.)

And folks, these are the Clems ruling us. They make Trump look like Ghandi.

Speaking of poor folks getting screwed, my favorite Steve Earle Song (it’s my life story);

Maybe I am wrong, but is this a typo?

Shouldn’t it be 45/47? With the hyphen it just makes it look like you Dean Karskied it into office (getting appointed but telling folks he was ‘elected’. Well at least he lived in his district unlike a certain MARSHALL SELBERG! Funny that Donny trash talks Biden, then wears a hat that negates his existence. Maybe he really is a Very Stable Genius?)

On that note, I have to tell you it was a great day of love, protest and joy in Sioux Falls! And not because Sally Tomato got to play with his tanks! I started the day on the Pedicab picking up folks after the parade, then I made it over to the No Kings protest, amazing patriotism! That is all I saw! People proud to be Americans and proud to support a Democratic Republic! Then I made it to the Pride Festival, what a great setup at Yankton Trail Park. I gave tons of rides and wanted to do more, but had a chain/sprocket issue I could not fix in the field. Who knew you secondary motor chain sprocket needs to align with your axel sprocket? I know now MOM! But I am back at it next week! The highlight of the day was when my E-bike friend who tried to help me fix the bike suggested he tows me to the bike shop. So funny! Been a long time since I have done 8 MPH down the bike trail. Maybe I need to look at this perspectively, or am I just using another word incorrectly again? Can’t wait for the E-Bike insults VSG.

Sioux Falls School District Election

The Sioux Falls School District will hold their election next Tuesday, May 13. There are 4 candidates running for 2 seats, with 1 incumbent running.

While you can vote for 2 candidates, I am only endorsing ONE candidate; Patricia Ringold.

I was in a weird position this time around to NOT know any of the candidates personally so I was able to do my research like everyone else, reading bios, media questions and the candidate forum. I have kept an open mind, and she rises to the top every time. Besides being just an average Jane (not a ladder climber looking to add something to her resume) she has years of experience in youth education and when she talks about the school system and kids you can tell she truly cares and understands.

As for the other candidates, they are all OK, so that is up to you, but what steered me away from them were some of their long winded, meaningless, canned answers. Kelly is the incumbent, yet she hasn’t said a peep about what she has accomplished so far on the board and blabbed about training HS school students for the trades, which is great, but she kept talking about the students as if they were part of some kind of economic development big picture instead of encouraging them to pursue higher education. Werner is a Trumper, but he does have some great ideas, unfortunately he thinks it is OK to display the 10 Commandments in the school room even though it is a clear constitutional violation. Duffy is a canned candidate that the Dems pulled from their hat. An accomplished attorney who made sure she answered every question perfectly. She was handpicked by out going board member Reiter who now serves as her treasurer of her campaign. This kind of crap irritates the piss out of me. Carly, you are done, enjoy your school board retirement. Why do outgoing candidates in this town always have to recruit a replacement for them? It’s irritating and to be quite honest with you it is extremely UNETHICAL and lacks integrity. I think Carly accomplished a lot of great things on the school board, so BRAVO! But let the chips fall where they may. This is why I am telling people to NOT vote for Duffy. This setup disqualifies her and you would think an attorney would know better. Oh, and none of the candidates mentioned our exploding property taxes. You want to know why? Because they avoid controversial topics like a 10 foot pole. I like leaders with spines.

School Board Candidate Forum on Wednesday

You can watch the event HERE! There are four candidates, but it is pretty obvious who will emerge on top. I am attending the Change Makers event on Saturday where 50 concerned citizens get to question the candidates in an open forum/round table. Can’t wait. I will focus on the 1st Amendment in my questioning. Be prepared candidates, I don’t accept BS answers, and I will call you out. I think anyone who runs for political office, especially locally, needs to study the constitution forward and backward. If you don’t understand the highest level of government law, you don’t understand governing.

Sioux Falls City Council Chair doesn’t like being yelled at

Curtist the Blurtist had a plan last night. He pulled an item from the consent agenda. The city was allocating $150K for two new ambassadors for DTSF. While I think it is awesome DTSF is creating jobs, I doubt the employees are making $75K each for the summer, but as DTSF says they need money for ‘training’. LOL. Why did Curt pull the item? Because he thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about the great thing these ambassadors are doing. Well, he was wrong. While our country is going into a tailspin because of a very stupid person, constituents are NOT happy, and they certainly won’t be happy about the city spending more money on the transient issue by spending more money NOT ON THEM!

So some constituents weighed in, and it wasn’t pretty. While they were certainly not friendly in their testimonies, they weren’t wrong. After the trip to the woodshed, Curt was unhappy so he said something like, “I didn’t know we were going to get yelled at . . .” First off, Curt, that is really your main job, listening to constituent complaints, and secondly if you want to POP off at constituents during a meeting you are VIOLATING a rule MMM put in place, NO CONSTITUENT INTERACTION WHILE THEY ARE AT THE PODIUM. So Curt, if you want to change the rules, which I am ALL for, to allow councilors to interact with constituents during public input, DO IT! But until that rule change is made I suggest you such your pie hole and take it like a big kid, or better yet RESIGN. Your disdain for public engagement is getting old, like you (as you pointed out in the meeting.)