South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

City Administration Building

1st Amendment City Administration Building city Link Downtown Sioux Falls Minnehaha County Planning Commission SF City Council Sioux Falls

Pitiful Pavers and absent minded Engineers

l3wis 0Comments

The city is set to start the next phase of the Minnesota Avenue rebuild between 2nd Street and 7th Street this Spring. The project will be $15 Million+. In the process they wanted to put pavers along Minnesota like in front of the City Center, and they want the stone reset in front of the City Center. So an independent contractor suggested to the city that when they put the pavers down Minnesota and reset the ones at the City Center they should pour a concrete pad underneath so they can’t sink and weeds don’t grow in them. I think they even suggested the faux poured pavers that are on Phillips Avenue. Nope, I guess they are going to go old school and just put it on sand so it will have to be redone in 10 years.

While I was talking to this gentleman he went on another rant about the engineering department at the city. He said they come and go as they please and he said, ‘Good luck getting anyone on the phone down there or responding to voicemails.’ He said a lot of other unflattering things also. I joked with him, ‘I have been saying for years they should fire all the city engineers and just hire a purchasing agent to replace them.’ Right now all city engineers do is read and approve engineering reports from independent contractors. They also write the RFPs.

I asked him what he thought of my theory that the Feds threatened the city over funding if they didn’t approve the data center. He said that it was a possibility since every department in the city gets money from the Feds. He agreed with my theory, ‘What if the city does everything the Feds want them to do and they still cut our funding? Then what?’ The city should just prepare for the budget shortfall until 2028 and lay off any city employees who receives department funding thru the Feds. Also, it is Congress that controls the purse strings and last I checked we have 3 Republicans representing us in DC, are they going to allow this kind of bullying? Trump just stopped a water project in Colorado for 50K residents because he is mad about that stupid bitch who broke so many state election laws that she got 9 years in state prison and Trump has threatened to bust her out using the Military. Something about a tank ramming the jail. Crazy crap. So his threats of budget cuts? Who cares and let’s just hope he gets a new pharmacist soon.

As for the Data Center I have two friends that work in the industry in Sioux Falls, and they have been sending me different information on how they work etc. They said that most of the Data Centers in Sioux Falls are no more then 30 MW (that is the largest) this proposed Data Center is 500 MW. Look at the power generation capacity we have;

So where will this power come from? Good question.

Most Data Centers have Server Racks in them and even some of the bigger ones in Sioux Falls only have a handful of employees with half of them handling security and janitorial. This is a power cord for just ONE rack of servers. It is about 4x the diameter of of a 210 power cord.

I’m hoping the petition drive is successful in stopping this, but I still think it could be stopped with a court order.

City Administration Building Mayor TenHaken Sioux Falls

City of Sioux Falls to receive $320K for failed geothermal system on the administration building

l3wis 6Comments

I originally requested this settlement in the middle of July and it wasn’t finalized until the end of that month. I received the settlement yesterday after I re-requested it from the city attorney’s office; ENTIRE DOCUMENT

As you can see below the city will receive a settlement even though all parties involved have agreed to ‘no fault’.

Geothermal systems work when they are installed properly and can save the users a lot of money in energy costs. What is NOT in this settlement is the cost to install a whole new traditional chiller system, the massive amount of water that was lost when it malfunctioned and the energy costs the city will now have to incur due to the more traditional HVAC system and our legal fees (which probably equals half of the settlement).

They got off easy. Too easy.

What is even more troubling is that an assistant city clerk and the chief of staff signed off the settlement. More sloppy legal documents. Tom and Paul must have been too busy enjoying Father’s Day in a remote location to sign off on the agreement. Was it gay pride weekend?

It would be nice to know the true price tag this screwup cost taxpayers. We may never know. It is also interesting to see that KHA is once again involved with a settlement for bad consulting (Events Center siding debacle).

City Administration Building Corona Virus Employment Governor Rounds Mayor TenHaken Rounds Sioux Falls Unemployment

I have been suggesting since 2016 that City of Sioux Falls administrative staff work from home

l3wis 4Comments

One of my biggest arguments against building a new administrative building was that many city employees who do administrative duties could work from home and would probably save the city millions of dollars a year.

Many of my friends have worked from home for years. In 2009 I used to work for a financial company as the Creative Director, before we closed due to asset selloff, I was preparing to work from home 3 days a week, and was excited about the possibility.

Even farther back than that, when Governor Rounds was being ribbed about having a state airline fleet, it was suggested to him to do more teleconferencing instead of flying places for meetings.

I also find it ironic that the mayor has been urging employers to have employees to work from home when he has done similar to Rounds and has flown all over the country and even the world for ‘meetings’ he could have done via Skype from the comfort of his office, also saving tax dollars.

I hope if something good comes from this pandemic, it is that employers invest in having their employees work from home. Not only is it less stressful and makes employees happier, it would save millions in capital expenses such as large facilities to house these people. It would also save the employees money because many would not have to get expensive childcare. And happier employees have less health problems.

Working from home is a great idea that has been going on for decades in this country, it’s time to expand this option to more workers in our community. It will keep people safer, it will save money and more importantly it will save jobs. It’s too bad it took a horrible pandemic to get employers to look at this option.

City Administration Building Rick Kiley SF City Council Sioux Falls Washington Pavilion

Open Bids save money

l3wis 5Comments

At Tuesday’s Sioux Falls City Council meeting, councilor Kiley argued that they shouldn’t put the IT expansion project out for bid because the delay would end up costing taxpayers more money. Pulling a crystal ball from his rear aside, that is not always the case.

Back in 2008, the city faced a similar dilemma, a bid was handed over to a contractor to replace the windows on the Pavilion, the problem was that when the Pavilion’s Operations Director turned the bid into the city, he realized later that he forgot to include labor and would have to resubmit the bid.

The controversy caused by this error got the attention of the media, so a lot more contractors bid on the project the second time around.

The city saved over $300K by resubmitting the project, in fact they had to amend the 2009 CIP budget to reflect the cost savings;

Improvements, by deleting $300,000 in year 2009 for windows (CIP p. 2-145).

We have NO IDEA if we are getting a ‘deal’ on the IT expansion because we never put it out for bid. And I can guarantee if it is put out for bid ‘after the fact’ there would be someone who would come in under $1.5 Million.

Open bids save tax dollars, and for councilor Kiley to say otherwise is just ludicrous and ignorant.

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