Homeless

Fence around the Dudley House is just a developer scam

UPDATE: During the meeting last night the Chancellor of the Catholic Diocese came up to podium to answer questions. He basically said that the city wants the entire lot (including the building) in 5 years for a construction staging area (to build the convention center). It is always amazing when folks from non-profits come to the podium and tell us the ‘REAL’ reason this is happening. I’m sure it took awhile for him to pull his foot from his mouth and the mayor’s boot from his behind.

The city council in all their ‘wussiness’ deferred the fence to March 4th. Much of the public input tonight was about how horrible of an idea this was and the council knew in all of their weakness if they passed this tonight all Hell would break loose, so they did what a gutless body of government does, kick the can down the road. They like to do this. I call them the ‘Hand Wringing’ council. This is what you get when no one has challengers and they take money from the elitist class. If you think the council works for you, please let me in on the good stuff you are smoking.

They want to have a neighborhood meeting (which is code for we want justification for our YES votes). City government is so predictable I thought about starting an online gambling site betting on their decisions. I would make millions!

But the kicker tonight wasn’t about giving a religious organization worth billions of dollars a fence, it was about a lease deal to take over the property, and guess what that is for? A convention center.

I gotta tell yah Pastor Poops, the Convention Center will fail, HUGE! Why? Because you have never completed anything in the public sector except F’cking things up. You have ZERO leadership skills, and you are kind of a jerk! You are also very angry, which I don’t understand. How is it a family man with a successful business and regular church attendance worth millions can be so stressed? Weird.

So in an attempt to move the shelter the city came up with this complex plan to build a fence.

If I just remove myself from this community and look at this from an exterior lens, it is pretty obvious what is going on here.

It’s not about a fence, it is about the ‘SNAKES’ in city hall trying to shove a convention center down our throats. Any councilor who votes for this will never recover. Trust me on this. Make the BDH pay for this. It is their property and they can do what they want.

UPDATE: City of Sioux Falls will construct a $70K fence around The Dudley House

UPDATE: While discussing this with folks we realized there is also a huge conflict of interest with the city giving this money for fence construction. The director of the shelter, Madeline Shields, is a contract employee(?) with the city doing ‘Inside Townhall’ as their moderator. I tried to get her removed because of this conflict several years ago (a raccoon could host the show) but no dice. So now we are giving money to city employees’ pet projects? WOW! I would also be curious what she get’s paid to do a 20 minute show once a month? Any guesses? Apparently $70K. I also had a conversation with a city councilor about this saying I approved of fencing for the employees but that should be the expense of the BDH. Obviously it would have to be withdrawn or amended at Tuesday’s meeting, not holding my breath.

Hey, just make sure you don’t put the fence posts in 5 gallon pails, that’s a NO NO. Item #20, read the explanation HERE!

Essentially we will lease the parking lot for $1 a year and pay for the fence and maintenance. A better approach would be tearing out the parking lot and put in a pollinator garden. This will just make the place look like a prison, and the folks that are now using it for shelter will just move into other parts of the neighborhood and downtown. When you tell a homeless person that can’t sleep on a certain sidewalk, they will just find another sidewalk. You are solving nothing and you may exacerbate the problem. Right now most of them are full view at that location, kick them out and they will disperse all over causing an even bigger problem. Be curious who the brain child that cooked this up? But I do agree employees of the BDH need a fenced in parking lot, but they can pay for it themselves. We keep throwing money at this issue for all the wrong reasons.

CITY OF SIOUX FALLS ALREADY APPROVING SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS AND IT IS ONLY FEBRUARY!

Item #22, well this isn’t good. A little early to start digging into savings. I have a feeling we will be seeing a lot of this this year. (Note, the $2.5 Million is a donation to us from a private party).

Mayor TenHaken to hold presser on rental code enforcement

This should be entertaining. Apparently Pastor Poops is feeling the pressure. I’m sure he will do what he always does, blame the tenants and tell them not to call him. I hope our diminishing press corps at this event will ask tough questions and hold his feet to the fire. As the chief administrator of our city he should be concerned for all renters (I believe 80% of our population in Sioux Falls rents, I saw this stat recently, but can’t find the reference, so just ‘Trump’ trust me on this one 🙂 Recently the council approved a 170 unit workforce housing complex that was in a perfect location and guess who was basically the only detractor? Another slumlord in town. I told a couple of councilors, ‘He is opposed because it will steal low income renters from him. I used to rent from this family, SLUMLORDS thru and thru.’ It’s time this city cracks down on these folks. I suggest the council put together a set of ordinances that would basically force slumlords out of operation, we will see if they have the courage.

Sioux Falls Homeless Forum

I was surprised this was filmed, but after watching I realized that it was a live streaming event on SDPTV, so why didn’t the city livestream on FB and in YT? It often baffles me that the city will hold these live forums or debates and instead of livestreaming in YouTube they record and post later? WHY?! And why did we only get a day notice of the event? It was said during the event that this was in planning for weeks. Also, the moderator, Lori Walsh from SDPTV was only asking the questions sent to her from the audience on TV and in the crowd. Pastor Poops and her clashed when she asked why we can’t go to other communities for solutions, and it was his theme of the evening, blame others, point fingers at others, too big of a problem for him to solve then lastly ignore it because it is NOT my job. He went on to complain that many of these service providers are not sharing data with the SFPD. Why would they? There are Federal laws about peeps personal data and if you are seeking to acquire information about a certain individual you need to go to a judge and get a warrant. Does this guy even understand personal privacy? Just because you are living on the streets or a shelter doesn’t mean the same Federal laws don’t apply to you. It amazed me that most of the panel knew what they were talking about, even the DSS Secretary, Altoff, who tried to cover up sexual abuse in the Catholic Diocese years ago, knew what he was talking about. Karksy and Poops, not so much. Paul has this attitude that if it is a problem to big for him to solve, he walks away. Pretty sad for a person who is supposed to be running our city. Still find it ironic when he was running for his first term he told the crowd at Democratic Forum he was going to close the Dudley house because he would solve homelessness in Sioux Falls. As I looked around the crowd, I wasn’t the only one laughing. While I agree with his stance now that this is NOT a problem you solve but manage, you have to at least be doing one of those things, and he is doing neither.