Charter Revision Commission

Charter Revision meeting was very entertaining

l3wis December 17, 2025 0Comments

It is rare I watch an entire city meeting and am thoroughly entertained throughout. I highly recommend it.

The first thing I will say is it seems the chair of the meeting, Anne Hajek was the only one who knew what was going on as she had to tamp down the rhetoric from the city attorney and Rick Kiley and as other members said things that made no sense.

Right out of the gate, Kiley decides to take on Anne, um . . . mistake. But he is so arrogant he really took a go at it. First he thot he could just propose crap on the fly since he is a member of the CRC (he thinks the mayor should get paid $200K and councilors $40K. Zylstra thinks the mayor should get $250K, we will discuss in a moment).

Hajek reminded him that he needed to bring his proposal forward like the public and the attorneys office by sending a written proposal in advance of the meeting. Kiley realizing he couldn’t win the argument tried to get Fiddle-Faddle to defend him, he tried and also failed. Then Kiley pulled the ‘former councilor’ card and said ‘well this is how we did it when I was on council.’ and Anne quickly quipped ‘The council and commission have different procedures and duties.’ I always knew that Kiley wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer and he didn’t disappoint tonight.

CRC DOESN’T EVEN BRING A FLOOR VOTE ON TWO CITIZEN PROPOSALS

To add insult to injury the two proposals by citizens didn’t even get a second motion for a floor vote. I’m sure it had to do with Fiddle’s tired old advice he gave again today that basically proposals from citizens that make major changes to the charter should be voted down by the CRC. Yet Fiddle is proposing a change in the charter (next meeting) to eliminate the mayor’s salary from the charter which is a parlor trick that gives the council and mayor the ability to give themselves raises without citizen approval. Kind of sounds like a major change Fiddle? He basically said only UNELECTED staff can put proposals on the ballot.

The two proposals that were voted down were removing the mayor from council meetings and advanced TIF rules. I supported both of them, but I told Zitterich on his TIF proposal it may be a little early since the legislature is probably going to implement new TIF rules this session, then we can fine tune them to Sioux Falls next year and that was the exact reason the CRC voted down the proposal. But I will give props to Mike, all of rule changes are in line with what the legislature is proposing. It wouldn’t eliminate TIFs but they would only be for very specific projects like affordable housing and not 5-star hotel parking ramps.

CRC APPROVES CITY ATTORNEY PROPOSALS w/A FUTURE MEETING ON SALARIES

There was some language changes to the charter that have to do with budgeting and election dates due to the change in state law.

But Fiddle has another proposal, he wants to take the Mayor’s salary off of the charter. Like I said above, this will let them decide their salary instead of the folks who pay them. There are also other proposals. Joe Kirby proposed a 20% increase as a course correction, Kiley wants to pay even more as does Zylstra. I told Anne tonight after the meeting they should just do a COLA that matches the COLA of the city employees (non-public safety). Problem solved.

I also told Anne that in the middle of a recession this is HORRIBLE time to ask voters to approve raises, it will fail miserably like it did last time. They really are that TONE DEAF! If you don’t think council and the mayor get paid enough then why did you run for office? You knew what it paid, it was clear in the charter.

Zylstra brought up the argument of the CEO running the city. So tired of that stupid f’ing argument. The city is NOT a for profit business that designs over-priced square space websites or a predatory credit card company, it is non-profit, taxes in, taxes out in services. It’s NOT hard accounting. He felt that the mayor (elected) should be paid like a CEO or the School District Super (they are extremely overpaid BTW). Here’s why his argument is silly. When we elect a graphic designer to be mayor, he doesn’t have the expertise of a public administrator. This is WHY hired administrators like city managers or supers get paid more, they likely have a PHD in public administration. They get the job and that is why they get the salary they do. Since an elected mayor doesn’t have the knowledge or experience of a Public Administrator they rely heavily on staff and directors, which is fine. In other words, delegating the work instead of actually doing it. I think the mayor’s salary is just fine where it is at. The financial opportunities the mayor receives thru business relationships make him more coin then a silly salary ever would (you know, like getting $1 millon over appraisal on a building you sold). I also think we need to move to a city manager form of government and have a professional run a town of this size while the council is free to form policy with the cooperation of the city manager instead constantly fighting the mayor.

I also find the argument for a raise tone deaf because of this chart;

If you recieved those kind of scores in your yearly review do you think your boss would give you a raise? They would probably sh!t can you on the spot.