Brandon

1st Amendment Brandon Minnehaha County SF City Council Sioux Falls

UPDATE: Data Center will get approved tonight

l3wis January 6, 2026 12Comments

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.

——————-

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.

1st Amendment Brandon Planning Commission Redistricting Sioux Falls SF City Council Sioux Falls

Data Center Re-Zone Lobbying Hard!

l3wis December 25, 2025 1Comments

I have been seeing quite a few ads online for this Data Center Lobbyist front called NetChoice. And they have specifically said in the ads that they are pushing for the rezone on the Data Center between SF and Weirdsville (Brandon).

I guess they are getting serious about this. But why would you advertise to the public when all you have to convince is a mayor and 4 councilors? NetChoice really doesn’t understand how this works.

Oh, and I read their posts about data centers. Total hogwash. I told someone for every ONE positive story about data centers there is 1,000 negative stories. Do you think that is a cabal?

I have told people I think only one or two councilors are opposed to this, but will get their titties twisted on Jan 6 and vote like good kids.

THIS IS PASSING, I HAVE NO DOUBT!

The sad part is this will set a VERY dangerous precedent. I think the city should wait for the state legislature to put regs in place before re-zoning, and BTW, in a joint-jurisdiction zone, which is even more troubling because who really has the authority to approve this? The County? The Township? The City? I don’t know, it is a freaking mystery to me.

If this moves forward, you will see a massive data center park built in Sioux Falls, and since we didn’t stop this NOW we are screwed, but are we?

I think this re-zone is important enough that there needs to be a petition drive to call a special election and overturn the re-zone. If we don’t stop this NOW, we never will.

I don’t have the resources to get 7,500 sigs in 20 days, but several non-profits do. I emailed a local non-profit opposed to this rezone and told them to get a petition drive ready, because this is the only way you will stop this madness, I would also coordinate with the sustainability folks, the Dem party, Jamie Smith’s campaign and that local group of independents lead by Knobe.

And it is madness. The way the council has voted on items affecting residents over the past two years has been baffling, counter productive, damaging, and frankly disgusting. If it’s black, they vote white. If it is white, they vote black. They vote against our interests so much I am trying to figure out what’s in the water at Carnegie?

The big boys in the tech world think they are going to roll us hayseeds in SD, it’s time we stand up to them and tell them were they can stick their servers.

1st Amendment Brandon Larry Rhoden SF City Council Sioux Falls South Dakotans

Who is really pushing the AI Data Center near Brandon?

l3wis October 28, 2025 3Comments

I don’t know the answer to that question, but I am speculating that GOED (Governor’s Office of Economic Development) is pushing this project.

We know that the data center will drive up water and electrical costs for consumers in that service area. It will also NOT create hundreds of jobs. For example, ADP has a data center in Sioux Falls. Do you know how many people work there? It’s about a dozen. It will only create jobs for out of state contractors to build it. A friend who works on data centers all over the country (technical builds) told me you could actually operate the facility remotely and have a local contractor if they have to actually show up and do repairs etc. In other words it could create ZERO permanent jobs. Most data centers run this way throughout the world with a central command center instead of having individual command centers at the actual physical locations.

So why do I think GOED is behind this? I found it odd that Brandon rolled over almost overnight, so did the Sioux Falls city council and planning commission. Yes, they are all famous for rubberstamping, but I have never seen this kind of unification behind a project unless someone has the foot on the pedal and a boot up their asses, and my guess it is Rhoden pushing this (and he wears boots).

Ironically, it sounds like this may not have been even a project that was on GOED’s radar, but once dumped in their laps they are probably trying to claim a win.

I’m not naive, WE NEED DATA CENTERS and they have to be somewhere, but don’t approve a project because of pressure from the governor based on false promises from a shadow foreign LLC, especially a governor that is even dumber then the person(s) who appointed him. What a Larry!

Brandon Planning Commission SF City Council Sioux Falls TIFs

UPDATE III: Your Dream Home Awaits in Southwest Brandon

l3wis September 8, 2022 12Comments

UPDATE III: I wanted to make a correction to some of the things being said about how the homeowners will be paying back the TIF. While I have surmised from Mr. Powers testimony last night that the repayment would go back to the developer, SF Simplified was told this from the city’s planning office;

The $2.14 million would help with the costs of getting the site ready for homes, designing, etc., and it’d be paid back to the city over the next 20 years via property taxes.

Which makes more sense since the city is footing the bill for the infrastructure, but it still puts into question what was said at the meeting last night.

Does the developer take on the $2 million in debt or the City? Is it a 15 or 20 year TIF? I’m not sure who is in charge of talking points for this project, but it gets more confusing by the day.

A city official told me today that the payback to the TIF will actually go to the bank who is giving the loan for the development, which makes sense. Oh, and guess who that bank is 🙁

UPDATE II: Finally! At the planning commission meeting tonight, commissioner Larry Luetke asks how the TIF works when it comes to the eventual purchaser. Planning staffer, Dustin Powers explained that as people purchase the homes they will have to pay their FULL property taxes then the county will pay part of those tax funds back to the developer until they hit the $2 million amount. In other words the developer is paying the full cost of the development and the homeowners will be paying back the developer thru their taxes over the next 15 years. So essentially, like Starr said last night, this is just a $2 million dollar break on the development itself, for the developer, and gives the eventual homeowner NO tax savings.

On top of that, there are NO guarantees the pricing will come in where they would like them to. The developer has already warned those prices could fluctuate (in other words go up) and there is no contractual agreement to keep the price where promised. Good for the developer, not so good for the homeowner.

*on a separate note, one of the newer commissioners called roads in a development ‘artillery roads’ instead of ‘arterial roads’. I’m not sure what an artillery road is, but if you drive around some central neighborhoods you can certainly see some streets that look like they got hit by artillery.

UPDATE: Tonight at the city council informational meeting they did a presentation on the TIF and it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that developer, not the future homeowner is benefitting from the TIF. Councilor Starr said it best when he suggested that maybe the city should just pay for the $2 million in TIF expenses (infrastructure) out of the general fund and not mess around with the TIF.

Either way, the half ass promise made from the administration, planning and the council before the last election is we were going to target affordable housing in our core, building density while cleaning up our central neighborhoods. Instead we got a ham and cheese sandwich made from Spam and Velveeta.

———-

The Sioux Falls Planning Commission will be mulling over TIF #26 (Items 5C & D) this next Wednesday. As you can see from the drawings below these are pretty tiny houses. I was also surprised by the floor plan in which the bedrooms were not placed next to each other with one bedroom next to the front entry.

What is curious is there is NO mention in the agenda documents about who will be getting the 15 year tax break. The developer or the new homeowner? There is also the infamous recommendation from un-elected paid planning staff;

Both staff and the development team believe this amount of TIF support is appropriate and adequate for the project to move forward, and that without TIF in this amount, this project as presented would be unable to move forward.

The classic ‘We can’t do this without the TIF.’ But again, I ask, who will be getting the tax break? How do you give a 15 year tax break to a developer who will be selling the homes? Will the new owners be getting a 15 year tax break? I’m puzzled how this will work. It appears to me that the developer will be getting a $2 million dollar tax break up front and the new homeowner will have to pay the normal taxes.

Hopefully we will hear an explanation at the meeting.

*You will also notice that the planning agenda is NOT using the annotated agenda like the city council is using now. Not sure why transparency is so hard for these folks?

Affordable Housing Brandon Downtown Sioux Falls Planning Commission SF City Council Sioux Falls TIFs

City of Sioux Falls planning affordable housing development in Southwest Brandon

l3wis August 25, 2022 19Comments

Well not quite Brandon, but almost. (FF 1:30)

As I understand it the development is in between Washington HS and the city of Brandon on a current empty lot. They will use a TIF to help pay for the roads and utilities. The most affordable houses will be slab on grade (NO basements, not even unfinished), 1,000 sq ft, single stall garage, $250K.

I think a better approach would be building NO attached garage and putting in unfinished basements with egress windows so the basements could be finished later and a garage.

What is silly about this is that when we have talked about building density in our core and providing more affordable housing this was NOT what people were asking for. But it should be NO surprise since the public had ZERO input and the councilors were met with privately about the plan. This video is the first time anyone from the public has heard about it.

I think doing a pilot program in central Sioux Falls would have been a better way to go. You pick a 8 block area that needs some help. The city could use a TIF to rebuild the roads, sewer, water, sidewalks, curb and gutter and street lighting. Community Development could provide loans to fix up the homes in the affected area and Affordable Housing Solutions could demo and buy up empty lots for new housing in the area. Building slab on grade houses next to Brandon with no apparent public transit service will do little to solve our affordable housing issues in the core of Sioux Falls.

UPDATE: Data Center will get approved tonight

Data Center Re-Zone Lobbying Hard!

Who is really pushing the AI Data Center near Brandon?

UPDATE III: Your Dream Home Awaits in Southwest Brandon

City of Sioux Falls planning affordable housing development in Southwest Brandon

You Missed

Is it time to recall the entire city council and mayor?

UPDATE: Data Center will get approved tonight

Big Announcement

So that took awhile