Circus at Falls Park?
l3wis 
Downtown Sioux Falls
Detroit Lewis wants to give you a Pedicab ride, but it is gonna cost yah
I had to laugh, a longtime sarcastic friend said to me, I call your PEDI cab a PETTY cab. I have been laughing about that for a week. I started DOWNTOWN RICKSHAW two weeks ago. I go out on Friday and Saturday afternoons. I will do a one way ride for $5.50, a DTSF tour for $20 (30 minutes) and hourly rentals $50 (Bike trail tours, date night, historic home tours, etc.) I can do ANYTIME if you book in advance for a special occassion.
I am open to any ideas, even special occasions like weddings, anniversaries and birthday parties.
Come check it out!
Do ALL Downtown SF Businesses support Saturday metering?
The short answer is NO, and probably why they skirted this move administratively instead of bringing it in front of the council where DTSF businesses could air their grievances in the public square. I supported this based on 1) That DTSF (the org) reassured the council that DT businesses support this* 2) it will ONLY be on Phillips and you can still park for free in the ramps (which I think will gradually be used more due to the Saturday metering on Phillips).
*At first glance I am hearing that only about half of DTSF businesses support this, the rest are ‘wait and see’. This of course is from random conversations I had with DTSF business owners, workers in DTSF and some city staff. Nothing scientific.
I have no idea what kind of support it has.
Which brings us to the crux of the issue. Besides being the council’s duty to vote on new taxes and fees, and a First and Second reading would have allowed people who own businesses DTSF and work DTSF to share their opinions. Maybe most of them support it? I don’t know, and we never will because the process was not followed and the council, once again, allowed a precedent by the mayor’s office. Tsk! Tsk! I sometimes wonder if Trump is our shadow mayor.
UPDATE: The Pavilion roof may be in trouble?
UPDATE: So I recruited some ‘needlers’ to see what they can find out. And oh boy, it is radio silence at the attorney’s office, the Pav and TenPoopen’s communication office. It has actually been a great laugh with those who shared with me the responses. I think I said to one of them, “Maybe you should remind Vanessa she works in the ‘Communications Department’. Accent on the Communications part. I wish I could change this font to brown, but our color blind mayor wouldn’t get it.
I told you a few weeks ago that I found out another contractor was putting the city in a bind. The city owns the Pavilion so we are responsible financially for any building upgrades, and the Pavilion takes millions each year in maintenance costs from the entertainment tax. Replacing the thingies on the roof cost us, ALOT! So the ‘rumor’ is that while replacing the ‘thingies’ they tore up the rubber roof (you really should not walk on them, let alone carry equipment and materials across it.) Not sure what the city is doing to get relief, but if they had a half a brain they would threaten a lawsuit to get the money. I was told that the repairs will cost over $1 Million. Another city project, another bad contractor. I thought we did RFP’s so we could select the best contractor? And where were the city building inspectors during this process? Were they not checking on the progress? And if so, couldn’t they see the roof damage? Someone told me once, “The city building inspectors are afraid of ladders . . . and the outdoors.”
Update: Did the Sioux Falls City Council approve Saturday metering in DTSF? Nope.
Update: I talked to some attorneys about this and they all disagreed with me on the tax issue. One attorney said it was a ‘government services fee’ basically you are leasing the space from the city so it is a fee. But they all agreed with me that the council really should have approved it in a 1st and 2nd reading so there would have been a public hearing before its implementation.
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When I saw the story yesterday that they were going to start metering on Saturdays I wondered when the city council approved this. Well, they didn’t because they did not have to. According to charter, ordinances 77.080-77.082 gives the parking director and strangely the city engineer the authority to determine when they can charge these fees. A few months ago when they banned monster trucks in DTSF the council did discuss Saturday metering but never gave a timeline or even voted on it, so I was expecting a vote this Spring. But I would argue that it DOES NOT give the director the authority to make this move;
The director of public parking facilities shall establish the hours during the day and night when parking meters or gates must be used and when the time limitations shall be effective,
Notice it says the director can determine the TIMES during a specific day, but it DOES NOT give him the authority to pick the days of collection, which he did here, SATURDAY.
I would encourage an attorney with some free time to go DTSF and park at a meter on a Saturday, receive a ticket then challenge that ticket in court by saying the director didn’t have the authority to pick a NEW day to start metering.
There is also the labor involved. Obviously they had to hire some new people to watch the meters. Was this in the budget? Did the councilors approve that? I doubt it.
This is a MAGA move by our Mayor. You don’t have the authority to start TAXING constituents on a new day without the approval of the policy body which makes taxation decisions, because as Staggers once said, you can call it a ‘parking fee’ but let’s call it what it really is; a ‘tax’.
The parking division also has a revenue issue putting most of their yearly earnings into bond payments for that color fart bunker ramp. The parking division needs more money, and they are coming for yah. I have contended that the city make ALL parking DTSF FREE, 24/7 except meters on Phillips, I would have them running non-stop, 7 days a week, and I would charge $5.00 an hour. If you want people coming DTSF to shop, may I suggest more FREE parking in ramps.