So, it has been very bizarre lately, I have been having random city employees approach me lately at Slumshine. Sometimes former employees but some current who tell me about some of the crap going on in the minion divisions. For instance, over the past year two randos told me that the salt trucks were turned down to the lowest level (200 lbs per lane mile) even in the coldest conditions to save money on salt and chemicals and to not have to fill so many potholes and the other rando told me they are on a mission in HR to eliminate any non management employees over the age of 50, and they are ruthless about it. I told them, “You should hold a rally protest in the lobby of city hall over lunch hour and have signs that say WE WILL NOT BE REPLACED.” They were puzzled by my dark humor. One of them said, ‘I’ve heard that somewhere before.’ Wow. Never met anyone who has attended a Klan rally or a Puss Boys BBQ. I kid.
But let’s get to pot holes. Remember a few years back we had this new fangled app to report pot holes? I’m sure it came from Poops Bloomberg conferences. So you can go online and report the pothole and once filled it will show the work completed. Not a bad idea. How it used to be done is potholes in residential areas would be filled on a complaint basis, and arterial and thoroughfares would just be maintained 100% in the Spring. That all ended with the app. Why? I ran into a FORMER city employee who wanted to tell me about the ‘farce’ the pothole app is. For the record, she is NOT disgruntled, she left the city for a better offer with a local contractor. She told me for the last 3 years she was on a pothole crew. When she first started they were sent to a neighborhood and told to fill every hole. Then the app came along and they were only to respond to the complaints. So they would, but she would also look around the intersection and fill other holes that were NOT in the complaint. She did this for awhile and her supervisor pulled her aside and asked why she was doing that. She was naive and believed that she would get a gold star for the day, nope, she was told to knock it off and only fill the holes on the complaint app. It bothered her for awhile and realized that it had to do with analytics and the city being able to show progress on the issue without really fixing the larger issue (like building better roads and having warranties).
She said the city treated her very well and has no ill will, she just thot it was wasteful and untruthful and wanted me to know. So I asked her about being on an 8 hour shift to just fill potholes from the complaint app. She said, ‘Two hours of work, six hours of driving around.’
Something just smelled too fishy about this data center rezone the other night. I was astonished that not at least ONE councilor voted this down. Their asses were so puckered up Tuesday night you could have stuck a piece of coal up there before the meeting started and it would have been a polished diamond by the end.
Go back a few weeks before Christmas when Poops’ Christmas card included eviction notices to non-profits across the city (It was one of the most Christian things he has done 🙂 Most of the NGO’s cut service immigrant. I said that this was a threat from DC to cut ALL of our Federal funding (health, infrastructure, parks and rec, police, fire, housing, landfill, public transit, etc.)
This has been going on across the country, Trump has been cutting Federal funding to cities that don’t follow his agenda on immigration and AI and data centers.
It was NO coincidence that the developer of this project was associated with Peter Thiel who is a close advisor and investor with our president. Oh and the lobbyist who used to work for the former ND governor and now Secretary of Interior then In comes royalty from Castlewood, Kyle Peters who is married to one of Noem’s daughters, and the list goes on, even a professional link between the lobbyist and Mayor Metro-Yeti Karen Poops.
You know why the legislature is proposing a sales tax break to Data Centers? Because new Federal Regulation requires it and NO roadblocks to data centers or they will sue and cut Federal funding.
The sad part is that if this is what REALLY happened, the council needs to hold a press conference and be truthful with the public. This has all the signs of a shake down. Believe it or not, if the citizens see our local elected officials being bullied by DC, we WILL defend you. F’ck Em anyway, they can keep their dirty tariff money for more orange makeup, or is it hand cream this week?
The interesting factor will be if this makes it to the ballot? And if so, the citizenry votes it down. Will Sally still slice our tomato in half? We will see.
And where is Ironic Johnny, Marion and Dustbowl telling El’ Dictator he can’t dangle this crap in our faces?
Out to lunch.
Rounds was on Barfrage the other morning trying to justify the murder of a lesbian mother poet who was trying to help officers push out their stuck vehicle, then he went full hypocrite. He says that the corruption in MN state government needs to be reigned in and blamed Walz. That is real f’ing rich Marion! Mr. EB-5 and Gear-Up murder cover ups? A five foot branch, a murder suicide with a fire proof safe melting and millions in Federal funds missing? Let’s just say Janks may have invented state government corruption but you perfected it. You should be calling Walz and advising him on how to bury the bodies better, we hear you are a specialist, or at least that is what the wall of yarn tells us.
UPDATE: So DN decided to do another story about the Data Center, and they got it right this time;
The issue is what could happen to this land. Two items were decided for a data center. The vote to approve rezoning for the land paves the way for the data center. In another item, the preliminary plan for the gemini addition was originally voted down, then reconsidered, and passed with another vote.
See, when you actually WATCH the meeting, you see what happened, but the headline was misleading;
Out of order: attendees react to city council vote on data center
The only people out of order at that meeting was the city council for approving this and the TV media who didn’t even bother covering this. I also noticed the city has been telling the media this;
A spokesperson for the city says proper and legal protocol was followed.
Who is this ‘spokesperson’? The janitor at Carnegie Hall? I think it is funny that the city attorney can’t even be honest about being a source. Loser. Sure the law was followed, but it was fast tracked. This land should NOT have been annexed for another 16 years! And it gets done in a matter of months. Was it legal? Sure. But it sure is shaky as HELL and someone with deep pockets and lawyer friends could challenge this. And before the 1st reading I also questioned the legality of the compatibility study;
Notice it says N/A. That means there is no legal grounds to pass this. NONE! ZILCH! ZERO!
Reminds me of a fight at Carnegie in 2015 when they had an opportunity to approve a solar farm in this same area and at that time it was in the joint jurisdiction area and NOT annexed into the city. There was a huge pissing match about it between council and commissioners. It would have failed by ONE vote anyway, even if the city wasn’t involved because tie votes with the commission results in a failure. I think about this, because right now we could be enjoying electricity from this plot of land instead of sucking juice. Such a huge missed opportunity. At the time there were all these promises about building houses in that area and that is why they opposed it. Never happened, now we are facing a data farm.
I often tell folks that local politicians are HORRIBLE at predicting the future.
There is also a rumor swirling that more land adjacent to this site is being bought up to build an even bigger data farm. Folks are checking into this. If true it means the developer of this project hasn’t been honest with the public about expansion. I know shocker. Ironically he probably wanted to tell the public but maybe his bodyguard talked him out of it. Yes, the developer of the project had a bodyguard following him around at the meeting. That should tell you what kind of person this is. If you have to hire a bodyguard to go to a public meeting, it is pretty obvious what you do for a living 🙂 Chew on that one!
In other news, I may be bringing back the DaCola podcast. I may be recording a PILOT with some other podcasters in the coming weeks about the upcoming city election. Wish me luck. They built a studio so the podcast will also have video and posted on YouTube. If I told you who built the studio, you wouldn’t believe me 🙂
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I think it is time to recall them.
There is a discussion going on in the background (I am NOT involved) about doing a petition drive to overturn this, which is good. But getting 8K sigs in 20 days is a heavy lift that will take hundreds of volunteers, BUT, if they decided to do this, they should circulate multiple petitions, you are out there collecting anyway so here they are;
• Revoke the annexation of the Data Center land
• Revoke the rezone
• Revoke the site plan
• A recall petition on every city councilor and mayor
I think on the last one we have 90 days to collect.
It is time to send a message to the city’s elected officials, you are not doing your job and actually hurting citizens personal finances. It is one thing that they are getting bad advice from the city attorney but the corruption is overwhelming. Transparency could fix this crap overnight but they are so deep in the chamber honey wagon that will never happen. And when a city government can’t function and is corrupt it needs to be booted from office. I think it would be hilarious to see two of the councilors get voted out of office that never received one single vote to get in that office. Poetic justice.
And let’s talk about the corruption, like annexing land just so a data center could be built, this was in the works for months and the council knew it. Or when councilor Spellerberg recused himself on Tre after voting on all the other items related to it. HUGE ETHICAL violation, but the rest of the council just turned the other way. Or when Marshall Selberg perjured campaign finance forms and was ILLEGALLY living out of his district for a year!!!! They didn’t do a damn thing and now he is running for Mayor (we know how this will end for the Harford resident). I even was working with them on some code enforcement solutions and getting all public meetings on YouTube. And they just ignored me after I offered suggestions. This council and mayor have no interest in representing us, so it is time for them to go and they can go serve on the Chamber board where they belong.
WHY IS TRANSPARENCY AND CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IMPORTANT?
This is the thing that bothers me the most about the council. Sure they do a ton of corrupt deals that grease their own wheels, but that is typical small town politics, it is the lack of transparency that fuels this corruption. The council knows they can’t be honest with the public because they would see all the backroom deals they are doing, and that scares them to death!!! I will give you a couple of recent examples of the council and city employees purposely covering up data in surveys so the citizenry doesn’t see how bad it is.
I filled out a copy of the Citizen Community Survey. I had one mailed to me, so I was a part of the scientific portion of the survey. They did another one online that anyone can take. I think they sent out around 4k surveys and had about 300+ respondents which is a pretty good percentage. I have been reading the final results of the surveys for the past 20 years. The city usually posts the reports online. This year was different. The comment section was missing. In the past they usually print some of the comments, positive and negative. This tells me most if not all were negative so they pulled them from the survey. I contacted the massive polling company that did the survey and requested the comment section. They have been giving me the runaround because they think I’m going to use the data nefariously. Nope, just gonna post it on my site. I told them 3 times in an email that I am a citizen of SF who took the survey and paid for the survey and I would like to have a copy of the comments. Still no response. In my last email I told them I was just going to contact management. I will get those comments 🙂
Another example is the missing survey files for the future of Frank Olson Park. I guess most surveyed said while they would like a new pool at Frank Olson, nobody wanted a bond (they said just pull from reserves) but instead the council bonded it even though the neighborhood was opposed, you know, like buying an old rec center that no one wanted. As I have said in the past, the bonding companies and contractors in town throw a bonding number at the city each year and makes them find a project to fit the dollar amount they want. They don’t care what it is. So the city conveniently hides surveys that paint a different picture. Don’t believe me, look at the budgets for the past 16 years, there is always a bond in there or a couple of projects we don’t need. Nobody wanted a rec center at Frank Olson except the bonding companies. And the survey says . . . .
Also, remember the GIFT of $1 Million from the Kirbys? At the presser the parks director said they could not spend the money to offset the bond. Guess why that is? Because the way the bond ordinance is written is that they cannot spend less then what the bond is only more, usually thru change orders. So basically the Kirby’s will be covering the cost of a nice sign and change orders. Thank you. But would they ever tell the public that bonds are not flexible? Why do you think we were forced to build the bunker ramp? We were bound by contract in the bond. We could have lawyered up and paid some fines and got out of it, but that would have required our mayor having something between his legs besides a fanny pack.
OUR LOCAL TV MEDIA IS IN THE BAG WITH THE CITY
After my rant last night at the city council meeting about our mentally challenged TV media I expected a story about the Data Centers, except they didn’t have anyone at the meeting, that was obvious when you read this sentence in the DN story this morning;
When the meeting resumed, a few votes had changed, but it was not enough to keep the measure from being approved.
LOL. Um, that is NOT what happened, but OK poli-sci major!
UPDATE: HOLY SH!TTTTT!!!!! So the council votes for the rezone, BUT denies the development plan. Then at the end of the meeting they did a reconsideration then approved the plan. Cowards. I have never seen a council pull such a chickensh!t move ever. I have been watching these since Hanson.
I told the council tonight during public input that if they pass this, that they just don’t care. And they proved me right, 7-0 (Barranco was absent, SMART MAN!) They all got in line and voted on a rezone that they fast tracked this summer under the radar. And I loved that part, because I suckered the dipsh!ts into admitting what they did. During my input I told them that the vote was ILLEGAL because of the fast tracked annexation and that the people who live in that part of the county are NOT represented by them. Well that ruffled their feathers so they started throwing legal questions at Fiddle (I was giggling at home) after public input trying to justify the legality (I knew it was legal, I just wanted to hear the excuses). So during their GOTCHA period they had to admit they fast tracked this. Morons. They can’t even cover their tracks. As for a petition drive, a few people approached me tonight that they plan on doing one. So that is good. I also brought up during my testimony that our TV media in Sioux Falls is WORTHLESS because they waited until the day of the 2nd reading to do a story about this. The crowd was laughing. But I was serious. They suck and they are in the bag with city government, it is disgusting. But after the vote, the real fireworks happened, and I figured it would. As folks were walking out they called the council about every name in the book, and not the good book. Damn, I thot I was watching Chapelle. LOL. I also found it funny that when the council was justifying their votes they only talked about the tax revenue and not one single one of them brought up our rates going up. They also justified it because there are other data centers in Sioux Falls. REALLY?!? Yeah, those are clerical, NOT AI, big diffo. But hey, they almost saved the day by denying the preliminary plan, 4-3, then bringing it back and voting for it. You were almost ready to govern, maybe in a few months;
One last rant about the night, man I could do play by play with Lalley and have a blast about this meeting, this one is going down in the history books and please Cameraman Bruce, throw this one on YouTube. Anyhoo, before public input on the Data Center, Paul told people they had to say the name of the town they are from. No they do not, it is a violation of your 1st Amendment rights. He is clueless. Paul actually got his ass handed to him tonight from the public for once. Thank You. I think I’m going to do a best of clip, especially the part where he gavels clappers. Good stuff. Or when the very nice mom told Paul to check his quote with Kelo. LOL.
It was nice to see so many people show up last night and make relevant points. They got to see our ineffective city council and mayor at work(?). And what is up with Paul’s obsession with knowing who is dissenting him? It’s weird, it’s like he is stalking us. Can an entire city put a restraining order on him? LOL. Remember last year he admitted in a podcast that he looks at people’s FB profile if they make a negative comment on his page. Yeah, he’s that guy. Metro-Yeti Karen. Before last night I told folks I have lost all hope with this current council and mayor, they are living in la la land. I knew the lack of transparency in the city would eventually collapse in on itself and that happened last night, and notice, I didn’t see a single TV camera there, shocker. But at least they covered the other weasels giving themselves a ridiculous raise during this horrific economy. I hope our tone deaf Charter Revision Commission puts a similar raise proposal on the ballot for council and mayor so I can watch it fail by 80% of the vote, but these clowns still won’t get it, they’ll try again next year.
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This is just the re-zone. The company will have to have final plans approved by the planning commission and city council. As I have told advocacy groups and individuals, this is getting approved and the only way to stop this is with a petition drive, but I still question the legal authority of the Sioux Falls city council to pass this. This is NOT within city limits. In other words, the folks that live in this district (likely a township and NOT residents of Brandon or Sioux Falls) will have officials NOT elected by them making decisions about land use. It would be like the township board voting on a gas station re-zone within the northern most city limits of Sioux Falls. Not their jurisdiction, just like this is NOT. It is called the joint-jurisdiction area that still needs to be annexed in Sioux Falls. Until that annexation happens, the county and the township should have the final authority on this re-zone. I think there could be legal challenges to this as well as a petition drive. I know it would be complicated, but I think the petition drive could reflect a special election within the township this rezone resides. Probably only need 100 valid sigs.
WE WILL SEE ON WEDNESDAY MORNING
I’ll be waiting for all of these ‘supposed’ advocacy groups to present their petition Wednesday morning, but I am not holding my breath. I think they continue to beat their heads against the wall for job security reasons.
I think the thing that bothers me the most besides all the shady legal authority surrounding this rezone is our water and energy costs going up and our elected officials don’t seem to care. It is pretty sad.
l3wis 
