Bunker Ramp

What’s going on with the Bunker House?

l3wis May 25, 2023 3Comments

An attorney said to me last week that if there has been this much silence from the city AND the defendant it is likely they are in mediation to settle.

Some would argue the city has legal standing in what they are doing, and on some level they do, but some would also argue that the constitutional and federal rights of the defendant is a much stronger case.

What would a possible settlement look like?

I don’t know, because to be honest with you I have never had to deal with such a thing, and I haven’t combed through every detail of the case.

In the simplest terms the city will probably allow him to finish the house and not demolish it, because as Judge Lange stated that would be a total waste, or as someone stated to me, tearing down the house would be the ultimate dick move by the city.

I don’t think the city has many other options.

COUNTY COMMISSIONS AND CITY COUNCIL HAVE BECOME DEFERRAL QUEENS!

The heck with the rubber stamps these bodies have, they have exchanged them for unexpected vacations and deferrals. Have you noticed lately that when the Lincoln and Minnehaha Commissions as well as the Sioux Falls City Council have to make an important decision one of the members will skip the meeting for a ‘scheduled’ vacation or they end up deferring it.

I wonder if any of them realize that when you put off an important decision it makes that ultimate final decision much harder for the public to swallow. Look at Pettigrew neighborhood. Past mayors, councils, officers and administrators have failed to make a dent over the past 30 years and the problem has gotten worse and the mayor calling 20% of the residents in Pettigrew alcoholics doesn’t help the situation.

As I have told councilors and mayors for the past 20 years, if you can’t do the job or are afraid to the job please resign so we can replace you with someone that can. I will agree that personal attacks that are unwarranted towards elected officials is unacceptable, but attacking your competence has always been free game. This has nothing to do with the character of those supposed leaders, it has to do with their courage, or the lack of.

Bunker Ramp Downtown Sioux Falls Public Utilities Public Works Sioux Falls

Maybe this is the reason Sioux Falls is limiting credit card parking meters

l3wis May 19, 2023 11Comments

So what do most people do if they are in a hurry? They say ‘F’ck it’ and move on. If someone is in a hurry and they find a parking spot DTSF but don’t have any change to feed the meter (that doesn’t have a CC reader) they will probably not go looking for another spot and just risk the ticket. Maybe that is what the city is hoping for.

You can either listen or read the interview;

GRABAR: I think so. Essentially, parking enforcement serves as a subset of what is now known as revenue-driven policing. And the idea here is that cities take advantage of these parking laws to try and get as much money out of people as possible, but not in the way that you would think, right? I mean, I think this is a common misconception. Meter rates are actually, for the most part, pretty low in most cities, which is to say they are below the market clearing price that would create empty spaces on every block. Most cities make more money from illegal parking fines than they do from meters and garage taxes put together. So, for example, New York City in 2015 made $565 million in parking fines. It’s the biggest category of fines that the city issues. But they made just $200 million from parking meters.

So what’s essentially being run here – and I don’t know if cities are conscious of this – is a system that is poorly designed that almost seems like the incentives are in favor of illegal parking because for the city, that’s where they make their money.

I would have loved to been a fly on the wall when the Parking Director, Matt Nelson and Mayor TenHaken had a conversation about getting creative with raising more parking fees. Probably went something like this;

Nelson says, “Paul, we just gotta find a way to get people to park in the ramps more.”

TenHaken responds, “Thank goodness I stopped that naked Indian mural, because that certainly would have drove drivers away.”

Bunker Ramp Code Enforcement Sioux Falls

The Bunker House will ‘Probably’ not be demolished

l3wis April 19, 2023 4Comments

According to this story the city has been very quiet about their intentions. I was talking to someone today who has been following the situation closely and they told me that the city will ‘probably’ not tear down the home.

I asked if they thought it may be because of the fear of Federal lawsuits? No. They said it is because of public perception, and if they pull the trigger they fear the blowback.

Which I find comical considering anytime we have a controversy like this in Sioux Falls the local media circle jerks around the story for about 3 days and everyone forgets about it.

Just ask someone who moved here a year ago what they think about the f’d up siding on the Event Center and their response would probably be ‘We have an Events Center?’

The city could tear down the place tomorrow, invite the media and food trucks and make a demolition party out of it and two weeks from now no one will care.

BUNKER RAMP HOTEL A BAD INVESTMENT

Last week I was talking to a local developer and joked that he should buy the Bunker Ramp. After saying he had no interest he informed me that building hotels on top of parking ramps across the country never works out well, and maybe he is right, Lamont couldn’t find the investors.

I go back to providing retail on the south side and building studio apartments above.

6th street Bunker Bridge Bunker Ramp Downtown Sioux Falls Potholes Sioux Falls

6th Street Bunker Bridge starter kit

l3wis March 27, 2023 7Comments

The day after the bridge funding was approved by city council a foot soldier told me that the price overrun was odd to him considering this is just a deck replacement. I asked him what he meant. It was his understanding that since the bridge isn’t that old (I think constructed in the 70’s) that the piers would remain and they are simply replacing the deck like they did with the 8th street bridge.

I didn’t want to jump the gun on that prediction so I have been watching the demolition and noticed the preservation of the piers and according to this media report, that is the case;

That’s to build cofferdams to protect parts of the piers in the river that will be reused.

So for a $10 million cost overrun we are not even getting a total bridge replacement? The taxpayers are certainly going down a certain creek without a paddle.

WHERE ARE THE CITY’S 2022 FINANCIALS?

Speaking of speculative book keeping, the city finance department has yet to release it’s audited or even unaudited 2022 financials. Usually there is a report to city council and the public by March of the following year.

Another foot soldier speculated to me that maybe the reason we haven’t seen it is because the mayor’s office is trying to figure out how they are going to explain the massive reserves the city coffers are nesting on.

Maybe we should institute the 1st Annual Sioux Falls Pothole Day Saturday April 1st and any citizen that volunteers for 8 hours on that day to fill potholes will receive $100 cash and a Sioux Falls ONE pin. That would be a quick way to spend some of that moldy money.

Art Bunker Ramp Downtown Sioux Falls Mayor TenHaken Sioux Falls

Should the city be mitigating risk when it comes to public art?

l3wis February 27, 2023 9Comments

This is a rendering I did of what I was told the Bunker Ramp mural would have looked like. A Native American taking a nap next to a river dreaming of buffalos frolicking in a rainbow sky. I still have NOT seen the image.

Mr. Lalley is suggesting that is what the mayor exactly did when rejecting the selected mural choice and cancelling the project all together, mitigating risk;

This wasn’t a commissioned piece, as Boice had to explain to me, which could include parameters on the theme or content.
In this case, the intent was to allow the chosen artist “control the narrative,” as Boice put it.
That’s new.
It’s a great idea when you’re fostering and supporting artistic endeavors in your community.
For a government, for people who want other people to approve of what they do, it’s risky.
But you have to know that going in.
Rejection from the wider public is always a possibility. In my experience uncertainty is the artist’s constant companion, whether they are painters, musicians, sculptors, writers or quilters.
There’s always risk in art.
City government is inherently about mitigating risk.
We may never know the content of what was intended as a short-term mural, that was recommended by the Visual Arts Commission and rejected by the mayor.
Which highlights a more perplexing theme.
We may never know if the mural in question was patently offensive to one or more groups of people in the community.
We may never know if the mayor was reacting to some real or perceived public consequence if he approved it.
With public art comes public scrutiny.
Artists usually want that.
Government usually does not.

While I still struggle with this supposed offensive mural, you can only look a block away to a naked dude that has been standing there for 50 years (with a short stint in a parks and rec boneyard).

While it appears that the mayor was mitigating risk, it also suggests to me he was more worried about what Taupeville would think of the mural and not everyday folks.

Just another shirtless Native American in front of the Bunker Ramp of Democracy.

Which brings us to Ben Black Elk;

As the unofficial greeter at Mount Rushmore, Black Elk spent 27 years welcoming guests and promoting Native American culture. A Huron Daily Plainsman article noted that he posed for an estimated 5,000 photos daily during peak tourist season, earning Black Elk the distinction of being the most photographed Native American in the world. In addition to his photo record, the Sioux City Journal reported that Black Elk was the first person to have a live image broadcast over the Atlantic — via the Telstar satellite that launched in 1962.

It seems the state did a fine job of mitigating the risk of having a shirtless Native American pose for pictures in front of Mt. Rushmore now if we could just figure it out in Sioux Falls.

What’s going on with the Bunker House?

Maybe this is the reason Sioux Falls is limiting credit card parking meters

The Bunker House will ‘Probably’ not be demolished

6th Street Bunker Bridge starter kit

Should the city be mitigating risk when it comes to public art?

You Missed

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

UPDATE: Data Center will get approved tonight

Big Announcement

So that took awhile