City Administration Building

Cory does a better job than I in explaining Salter’s ruling on the petitions

I would like to thank Cory for weighing in on the topic;

The petitioners argued that they “substantially complied” with the law in seeking signatures from Sioux Falls voters. Indeed, no one has demonstrated that Team Danielson sought to pad its signature count by seeking signatures from non-Sioux Falls voters. Clerk Greco’s own review of the petition found sufficient local signatures to validate the petition if the oath hadn’t fouled things up.

But Judge Salter doesn’t ask whether the petitioners substantially complied with the signature requirements. He asks whether the petitioners substantially complied with the requirement to swear the municipal initiative petition oath by swearing the statewide initiative petition oath. Judge Salter says that swearing the latter does not substantially comply with swearing the former.

Bruce also weighs in on Cory’s post;

Cory, the courtroom experience was interesting and Judge Salter was very engaged in the questioning. I was impressed in his involvement.

There is a misconception needing to be cleared up. The statement from the ruling “Danielson knew he had obtained the Statewide Form and not the correct Municipal Form when he began his petition effort in late July” was never addressed in the courtroom.

I did not learn of the oath error until a week AFTER the petitions were submitted for validation. Had the city website been functional or the Clerk been willing to assist in construction of the petition, I would not have used the wrong oath.

This narrative is what happens when anyone makes decisions on what you think happened without knowing all the facts. I could have been asked the question when I was on the stand. Now it is part of the permanent record without being part of the evidence.

I have argued that if Judge Salter would have ruled in favor of Danielson, he could have possibly set himself up with an even bigger decision, whether or not to rule an injunction against the bond sale. By ruling against Bruce, based solely on the oath and not signatures Salter freed himself from having to make a very ‘political’ decision. Judges try to stay out of politics, and who can blame them? I’m not saying that was Salter’s angle, I’m just saying by not ruling in favor of the petitions he saved himself a lot of headache.

Congrads?

I guess I have never heard that word before, but when you are either high or drunk or both most of the day, spelling isn’t really a virtue.

As I was at the Mayor’s Neighborhood Summit listening to our guest speaker talking about all the things we do the opposite in Sioux Falls, and the Mayor talking about his favorite topic ‘bad neighbors’. Bruce shows me a photo of a sign that was nailed to his side of the fence in the middle of the night.

And he is the bad neighbor.

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The ‘Extremely Helpful’ city staff at the citizens ‘Beckon Call’

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As this whole administration building thingy got wrapped up today with the mayor’s press conference at NOON (we will have video up soon with my commentary) and his multiple lies and unanswered questions, I did get a good laugh out of the ‘service’ the petitioners received from the city employees. Like I said, it helps to laugh at these people and their bizarre excuses.

Mayor Huether started the press conference with an apology to city clerk Tom Greco and the city attorney and their families for the way ‘they were treated’ throughout the process. I almost burst into laughter.

First off, I find it hard to believe that Greco was at Bruce’s ‘Beckon Call’ when it came to questions about the petition. This is the same Tom Greco that sent a middle of the night email rant to Bruce about his sick kid and military service. But there was also this interesting email sent out by the city attorney back in July to the mayor, city council and city directors, and it is NOT about caramel popcorn and peanuts;

From: Pfeifle, David

Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2016 5:06 PM

Subject: Argus inquiry on possible initiative for new building bond ordinance Tom Greco and I were contacted by Joe Sneve about a possible initiative effort by Bruce Danielson. An initiative effort would need to gather at least 7,000 signatures to produce approximately 5,750 valid signatures, based on historic failure rates. Tom would then need to conduct the random sampling process to validate the petition. He would review 10 percent of them according to SD Administrative Rule. This process can take two to four weeks, depending on various factors, including whether someone challenges the petition and demands all the signatures must be validated. Assuming a petition contains sufficient valid signatures, Tom would then present the petition to the City Council for further action. The Council can either automatically place the item on the April 2018 ballot or order a special election to be called no earlier than 30 days from the date of the ordinance calling for a special election. A unique situation is present when bond sales are involved. We both informed Joe that it would be extremely unlikely that this effort could lead to an election and canvass to occur before bonds would be sold in the first part of October. Once bond sales occur, state law prohibits the use of the initiative process to “nullify the purpose” for which bonds have been sold.

David A. Pfeifle, City Attorney

Wow! Where to begin? I’m out of breath just reading this boloney roll.

a) It is actually 5% and we did reach that threshold with 6,400 signatures

b) The validation process takes between 4-6 hours with 2-3 people. Based on what past clerks have done.

c) Fiddle claims that if sufficient and valid signatures were attained and the city council was able to call an election before the bonds sold, it still would not stop the sale. Well, that would have been up to a judge. As the minimum wage petitioners proved, since they referred it to a vote, it stopped the law from going into affect.

While the mayor made this ‘personal’ by apologizing to the families of Greco and Fiddle, I will not. But if the mayor, the courts, or the city council think or believe Greco and Fiddle were at the beckon call of Danielson and did everything in their power to help them, it doesn’t take much to buffalo them. As you can see from the email, it was evident from the beginning they were going to stall and railroad this anyway they could see fit. Hardly helpful to process, in fact quite the opposite. Maybe next time the mayor needs to apologize to the public for having such poor and vindictive public employees working for this city.

I knew we were going to lose

As I have mentioned before there are two things I know about our current state of city government and my analysis of it;

  • It is predictable
  • I’m a cynic

Given that, I told Bruce from the beginning to not do the petition drive, I knew in my heart that we could never overturn the mayor’s decision to move forward with the project.

Even if the oath was correct, we would have had a terrible timeline to deal with. First off, you would need at least 6 councilors on board to call a special meeting to call an election, that would have had to happen before the bond sale. That would have been an impossible feat in itself.

But let’s say that magically happened, you would have still had to go to the courts to get them to delay the bond sale for the election.

I’m not saying our mayor, our courts or the city council is crooked in the process, I’m just saying the planets would have needed to align, big time.

The worst part about this is that the citizens lose. Whether you are for or against the building, you still did not get to decide. Much like the aquatic center, only one person got to put their rubber stamp on this.

It’s easy to be angry. I am not. I have often told my readers that if you can’t laugh at politicians, you will only end up hating them. I laugh a lot.

Local politics matter, pay attention, present your voice. Recently the Oakview neighborhood got ahead of an issue, and they succeeded, you can make a difference, but your timing is essential. On the Admin building, our clock ran out.

At the end of the day we can be thankful for one thing; term limits.

City of Sioux Falls Finance Director seems a bit confused

Tracy announced this yesterday after the petition hearing;

Unless the courts advise us that we cannot legally proceed, the intention is to sell bonds in October. No official date for selling the bonds has yet been set.

Funny, because according to Moody’s the sale will take place on Tuesday;

Rating Action: Moody’s Assigns Aa2 to Sioux Falls, SD’s Sales Tax Rev. Bonds, Ser. 2016A

Global Credit Research – 27 Sep 2016

New York, September 27, 2016 — Issue: Sales Tax Revenue Bonds, Series 2016A; Rating: Aa2; Rating Type: Underlying LT; Sale Amount: $19,970,000; Expected Sale Date: 10/04/2016; Rating Description: Special Tax: Sales

So which is it Tracy? More games from city hall.