South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

Curt Soehl

1st Amendment Curt Soehl Downtown Sioux Falls Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls City Council Chair doesn’t like being yelled at

l3wis 4Comments

Curtist the Blurtist had a plan last night. He pulled an item from the consent agenda. The city was allocating $150K for two new ambassadors for DTSF. While I think it is awesome DTSF is creating jobs, I doubt the employees are making $75K each for the summer, but as DTSF says they need money for ‘training’. LOL. Why did Curt pull the item? Because he thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about the great thing these ambassadors are doing. Well, he was wrong. While our country is going into a tailspin because of a very stupid person, constituents are NOT happy, and they certainly won’t be happy about the city spending more money on the transient issue by spending more money NOT ON THEM!

So some constituents weighed in, and it wasn’t pretty. While they were certainly not friendly in their testimonies, they weren’t wrong. After the trip to the woodshed, Curt was unhappy so he said something like, “I didn’t know we were going to get yelled at . . .” First off, Curt, that is really your main job, listening to constituent complaints, and secondly if you want to POP off at constituents during a meeting you are VIOLATING a rule MMM put in place, NO CONSTITUENT INTERACTION WHILE THEY ARE AT THE PODIUM. So Curt, if you want to change the rules, which I am ALL for, to allow councilors to interact with constituents during public input, DO IT! But until that rule change is made I suggest you such your pie hole and take it like a big kid, or better yet RESIGN. Your disdain for public engagement is getting old, like you (as you pointed out in the meeting.)

Curt Soehl Elections Mayor TenHaken Paul Ten Haken Sioux Falls

It’s going to get a lot more expensive to run for local office

l3wis 3Comments

I didn’t say that, our mayor did. A few weeks back there was an article in one of the local circle jerk publications where they interviewed Curtis the Blurtist and Poops about the change in local elections (I support a November election though the council may be leaning towards June, which is bad because of the partisanship). Since most of the council is Republican I have no doubt that a majority including the mayor support a June election because it is mostly attended by Republicans so if they do just a little bit of research they will figure out who the conservative Republican is running for council and pick them based solely on that. If we move council elections to June, we will never have an indy or dem on the council again. And that was the ultimate goal of the legislature by doing this. Let’s just say they are gerrymandering using an election instead of a district.

But I want to talk about a quote in the article by Poops. He basically said that local elections will get more expensive when they have to compete with campaign advertising space with legislative candidates, etc. He isn’t wrong, it will get more expensive, but guess who started us down this ‘expensive’ road? TenHaken. This is a guy who handpicked council candidates then created his own PAC so he could funnel thousands of dollars towards his preferred puppet candidates and now he questions the cost of running in a local race. LMFAO! You are part of the problem PAUL! Not to mention this is a guy who attained a large part of his personal wealth designing websites for campaigns and getting his DSU ‘Doxxing Team’ on it. So now you are complaining about MONEY in politics?! Money is what got you and your puppet show elected, because it certainly wasn’t leadership skills.

Curt Soehl Downtown Sioux Falls Elections Mayor TenHaken Riverline District SF City Council Sioux Falls

We may have the ‘Trots’ for another few months

l3wis 5Comments

It seems Poops and Curtis the Blurtist are in a tizzy over moving our city Spring elections. The state legislature, in all their insanity, changed state law so the city election has to be in June (during primaries) or in November (general). I’m okay with that, but I would support the election in November instead of June. Primaries are partisan and would only confuse voters to see a mayoral and council candidate with NO party affiliation on a ballot with legislators that are partisan. I do believe it will help voter turnout, but I will be curious as to how many undervotes (non-votes) are recorded in the city races if we move the election. Of course the city may have to call a special election asking voters to choose either June or November for the election. I think Curtis and Poops will support a June election. It will be interesting to see if Sioux Falls voters get to choose the date or if we are just approving what these two clowns want. I think the Charter Revision Commission will have to weigh in on this. Like I said, I support moving the election to November, but I am not looking forward to 5 more months of the ‘Trots’.

DID THE CONVENTION CENTER GET KILLED BECAUSE IT’S MAIN CHEERLEADER IS NO LONGER WITH US?

A reader pointed out to me that the CC at the Riversh!t Pisstrict was probably dropped from the Mayor’s agenda because it’s main cheerleader (not Paul) has died, Craig Lloyd. I kind of agree and never really thought about it, but Lloyd had a lot of weight behind the project, and I have a feeling after his passing, the leadership team at Lloyd said we got enough irons in the fire we don’t need to fart around with this. The company is also rumored to be under ‘reorganization’ which started last summer (this has been confirmed to me by several sub-contractors to Lloyd). I’m glad it’s dead, for now, but we will have to watch this. I’m sure future council and mayoral candidates won’t touch this topic with a ten foot pole. I think major discussions will be had about property taxes and the homeless in the next city campaign. I would love it if at least one council candidate and one mayoral candidate (I’m talking to you Christine) bring up transparency in city government and especially the information coming from the SFPD. A closed government doesn’t function properly, and until we fix that, we won’t accomplish anything in city government.

Alex Jensen Christine Erickson Count-cilor Alex Jensen Curt Soehl David ZoKaites Elections Erica Beck Former Mayor Marshall Selberg Mayor TenHaken Mike Huether Rich Merkouris

Mayoral Race shakeup?

l3wis 10Comments

Since we last discussed this here was the short list of potential or rumored candidates running for mayor;

Mike Huether

Curt Soehl

Rich Merkouris

Alex Jensen

David Z

Erica Beck

Christine Erickson

Marshall (Mr. Illegally living out of his district) Selberg

Well, the shakeup is interesting. I guess Beck has decided to NOT run which put Mastor Poops in a tizzy to find a NEW recruit, apparently he must make sure his horrible policy decisions continue in a good prosperity gospel candidate. He found someone, and they are a nobody, well in the public square sense. They are the president of a local company I have never heard of. Of course, I will not share his name yet, because we truly don’t know until they announce and I will do some digging to find out more about this white, christian, male in his late 40’s. Sound familiar? I hope in next year’s city election folks wake up and realize this current mayor sucks dog do do and anyone he would recruit or endorse will likely go down in flames. Maybe Beck realized this, or maybe she wants to keep her very lucrative job? (Her pay and benefits would be cut in HALF if she became mayor).

Curt Soehl SF City Council Sioux Falls

UPDATE: Why did Sioux Falls taxpayers give $100K to the SD Trade Association?

l3wis 2Comments

UPDATE is at bottom of article. Also, as many know by now Luke Lindberg is the son-in-law of John Thune, so no surprise he got the money.

I only agree with Councilor Curtis the Blurtist on occassion, and he is correct when he said at the 1st reading of the grifting agreement;

“This is not our role as a city,” he said at the council’s Jan. 14 meeting, noting that City Hall relies on organizations like Forward Sioux Falls, the Greater Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Sioux Falls Development Foundation to navigate private markets on Sioux Falls businesses’ behalf. “If they’re going to continue funding trade, that’s fine, but … it’s not our lane as the city of Sioux Falls.”

He is correct. These importers and exporters are private capitalistic business owners who generate millions in selling and buying products, they should be funding this organization. And let’s take a look at their tax filings. As you can see this is just pure grift, they didn’t need our money, they should have went to their members if they needed this money. The council’s priorities lately with handouts has been atrocious and needs to end.

UPDATE: Notice in their fiscal year of 2023 they spent very little of their budget on actually helping importers and exporters, most went to salary (LINBERG is going to work for the Trump Administration). There expenses were $407K and they only spent $42,752 on helping their members (10% of total expenses) with half going to travel expenses ($22,477). So I guess it is safe to assume the money we just handed them is going towards salaries and not actually helping trade. I wonder if the council even bothered to research their expenses before giving them their money. Don’t kid yourself.

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