PRESS RELEASE
A new ballot question committee, Save Your Neighborhood, registered with the City Clerk today. Â The Save Our Neighborhood group submitted the registration under a slightly different name, Save Your Neighborhood, to reflect the fact that the issues it faces and have addressed, affect neighborhoods throughout the City.
Save Your Neighborhood’s aim is to educate the public on the FACTS surrounding the rezoning of the land at 85th Street and Minnesota Avenue.
While Save Your Neighborhood lacks the financial resources of Walmart, it encourages the citizens of Sioux Falls to look past the vast funds that Walmart is expending to influence the voters’ decisions. Â The group encourages citizens to discover the FACTS regarding the rezoning of this area, including the impact that rezoning of this area will have on the residential area next to it and the impact that the City’s decision will have on neighborhoods around the City. Â If the City allows Walmart to buy zoning to allow it to build a commercial development next to this residential area, it makes every neighborhood in the City susceptible to the whim of developers.
Save Your Neighborhood is not opposed to the City’s growth, but maintains that such growth must be logical and consistent. Â Further, the group welcomes commercial development and a Walmart to the south side of the City, but maintains that a large commercial development is inappropriate at this particular location. Â There are far more appropriate building sites in southern Sioux Falls for this store. Â Those locations would replicate the same proper buffering and improved access that our fellow citizens will soon enjoy at the new Walmart at 60th & Marion.
Save Your Neighborhood urges the citizens of Sioux Falls to send the City a message:  that our neighborhoods are not for sale to the highest bidder and zoning in this City cannot be bought.  Vote “NO†on Referred Law 4.
While I think there is many good things about Shape Places, I am also encouraging a “No” vote. Why? I believe if Shape Places fails, it doesn’t mean we have to shelve it and start from scratch, it just means we can tweak it. First thing I would like to see is it split up into sections, and have the council amend it (require CUP), study it and discuss and debate it in these sections. And instead of voting on all the sections at one meeting, Break the sections up into several meetings, so the council has time to focus on the different areas of Shape Places. Presenting an over 300 page document at two meetings then expecting the council to vote on the entire thing in one quick swipe was short sighted. Most of them confessed they didn’t read most of it because of it’s size. Of course, I believe that the Planning Department did this on purpose so the council wouldn’t bother with amendments or actually studying the document, I guess they were depending on good old apathy from the council, as usual, and the bigger rubber stamp, except, they didn’t count on SON referring it. I hope they learn a lesson from this and presenting legislation in such a half-ass way.
l3wis 
