David ZoKaites

UPDATE: Mayor TenHaken claims he has an executive order that violates the 1st Amendment AND the city charter

In a very strange exchange tonight at the city council meeting, Mayor Selfie made an astonishing admission. During the public input for the proposed campaign finance ordinance, David Zokaites mentions at the end of his testimony that Paul said last week from the dais that he was running for re-election, so David said ‘He’s got competition – me!’.

Paul got irritated and told David, ‘I would remind you David Z based on that you are not to use the dais per executive order to promote your candidacy, so this will be the last time you will be able to mention that, from the podium.’

David quickly snipes back, ‘That goes for both of us.’ and PTH says, ‘I don’t speak from THAT podium. That’s just a reminder of that executive order and thank you for adhering to those rules of this chamber.’

Wow! What arrogance! First off, people have been making those kind of pronouncements from that podium for years. Why? Because they can. I actually think it is hilarious that Paul thinks he can write an executive order (and not tell anyone about it until tonight) that is unconstitutional. No mayor in any city in this country can override the 1st Amendment and the US Constitution. It only proves how thick and petty Paul is. The rules for announcements applies to city officials from the dais because they are using their government position (and ultimately our money) to promote themselves. Any candidate that is currently not serving on the city council can say anything about their candidacy from the public input podium. Also, the city council controls their chamber, NOT the mayor. He cannot write an executive order about how the council runs their meetings, that is a violation of the charter, even though I’m more worried about the constitutional violation.

Never thought I would see a mayor in Sioux Falls admit to violating the US Constitution and City Charter at a public meeting. Ellis is right, it’s amateur hour at city hall.

Parade of Lights – Political Float BAN

I knew about this before last Friday’s Parade of Lights, but I didn’t want to spoil the parade for mayoral candidate David Z.

At first David was told he couldn’t put his ‘David Z’ for mayor car in the parade because the Parade of Lights has a ban on ‘political’ floats, you know, because of all that ‘family crap’ event (God forbid we expose the youngsters to politics), never mind all the commercialization of Christmas which turns a knot in my stomach more than any political candidate waving from a car.

David was allowed to be in the parade, but he had to ‘cover’ the ‘for mayor’ lettering on his car. David covered it so it said, ‘David Z as honest as Abe Lincoln’ and dressed himself in a holiday lighted version as America’s greatest president. Good for David, he rolled with it, I would not have.

Besides the fact that thousands of tax dollars are being spent on the winter wonderland (putting a private charity fundraiser out of business at Yankton Trail Park) and the fact that over a dozen of public works vehicles were featured in the parade. And most importantly DTSF receives property tax money for operational costs.

The Brookings Parade of Lights does not have a political float ban. So why does Sioux Falls?

We are constantly asking why we have such low voter turnout in municipal elections, well one of those reasons is that the city spends very little money promoting city elections. Organizations like DTSF doesn’t have a problem with TAKING our tax dollars, they just don’t want us to have a conversation about the politics in this community, they just want our money.

DTSF needs to END the political float ban, simply for the fact they receive public funding. If they want to keep their archaic rule about the ban, fine, we can take their public funding away and move the Parade of Lights to circle the Top Hat and Sunshine foods like the Zombie Walk parade.