2019 was the Year of the Quitter

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Apparently the city of Sioux Falls didn’t have Booze Cart Fridays

It seemed everywhere you looked in 2019 in Sioux Falls (and in South Dakota) there were quitters. Whether that was several restaurants closing or the proposed closure of the Sioux Falls Canaries Stadium and Arena, it was the year of the quitter.

Let’s look at some of our local government quitters.

First, on a state level, Stace Nelson threw in the towel due to a combination of health issues and the corruption. Noem’s staff has been quitting at a breakneck speed. You can tell why she is so proud of her relationship with Donald Trump because they are cut from the same cloth. Do and say stupid things and your staff quits. Go figure.

In Sioux Falls we had some communication issues. Mostly with Mayor TenHaken not figuring out how to communicate with the public or the media. His police chief also has that issue (unless he needs to implement a fee on non-profits for festivals). Speaking of that, apparently the city is no longer going to assist with these festivals for free. More quitters.

Mayor Paul has also quit plowing the streets as much and ‘tried’ to quit using city employees for storm cleanup (but perfectly okay to pay them to put up Christmas lights at Falls Park).

We also can’t forget who has personally quit this year, with little rhyme or reason. Paula Hawks (Dem Chair), Aaron McGowan (State’s Attorney), Jason Reisdorfer (Innovative Drinker), and Brian Maher (SFSD Super). Heck even Marty Jackley quit his private law practice (oh and he quit his marriage to);

On October 18, 2019, Marty and Angela were divorced citing irreconcilable differences.

This is why I am flagging 2019 as the year of the quitter. Now if we can just get our president to quit. Come on Donnie, you only have a couple more hours – do the right thing.

Innovation Director steps down from city of Sioux Falls

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It seems Jason is moving on to start a new business. The only thing that surprises me is that he lasted this long, I said this when he was hired;

While I hope he does good things, and I think he probably has some good ideas, otherwise Paul wouldn’t be so Gung Ho in hiring him, I think he will become easily frustrated and probably not make it very long in city government. But I wish him well in the short time he will be working for us.

I predicted he would last about a year. What is frustrating as a taxpayer is that during his tenure he never accomplished the goal of fixing transit. Now mind you, this is not a easy task, but it has gone in the wrong direction. But what has been even more frustrating is that in the short 15 months he worked for the city he flew all over the country receiving training from various organizations. While it is true that some of these orgs paid for the trips, he was still getting a salary while attending them, and now he gets to add it to his resume instead of benefitting us.

Jason said this in February of this year;

It motivated him alright, to find another job. I have no doubt his assistant and former Click Rain employee Allie Hartzler will probably get his job. As with most things city government, very, very, very predictable. I think the mayor has known about this for awhile.

Sioux Falls Transit meeting probably violated open meeting laws today

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I know, I was shocked to hear the news to 🙁

Besides the fact that there are NO supporting documents online, I guess no supporting documents or presentations were available at the meeting either. If what I was told of the meeting was true, well, that’s kind of an open meetings violation.

I think it is time to start doing some citizen arrests 🙂

Also, I guess the all knowing Tech Director, Jason ‘The Toolsalesman’ Reisdorfer did not attend because he is busy bragging on FB that he is drinking at the Smithsonian. Please tell me this wasn’t at taxpayer expense.

Open Video System (OVS) proposal by City of Sioux Falls Innovation Department needs to be stopped

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There isn’t a lot of research out there about OVS even though it has essentially been around since the mid-90’s. It essentially gives broadband and telecoms the right to stream videos online without a franchise license like major cable companies. There are some other details involved, but you get the gist.

A lot of us use these services, and hopefully if you are ‘subscribed’ to them you understand the terms. The companies most likely have a lot of data on you. Besides knowing some financial information, they know when you watch videos and what kind of videos you like. They use these ‘cookies’ to know what to advertise to you. It works similar when you purchase products from an online company. If they see you like buying crime novels, they most likely send you emails about books available.

For instance I’m subscribed to Expedia, it knows when I am searching for certain deals and alerts me.

While all of this is done in the private sector, and you willfully agree to it, then I guess you don’t mind that these private companies are collecting massive amounts of data on you to help make themselves more money.

When government does it, well, that’s just creepy.

The city is exploring using OVS. I don’t know any details on what they intend to do, but they will have a presentation on Tuesday at the informational and are looking to appropriate money for the system during the regular city council meeting.

This is what I do know. If the city buys into this kind of system, you will essentially have to ‘subscribe’ to the service to use it (even if it is FREE). This will allow the city to ‘data mine’ on you like the online retailers do. They will be able to know when you watch the videos, how often and when. They will be able to take your subscriber data and compare it to voter data and then be able to establish a profile.

So why does the city want to do this? Well there are several reasons, and none of them are good for the citizenry. The city is already collecting data on several fronts. If you downloaded the city app to report problems, watch videos on the city’s FB page while logged in, or use the data portal to search data from the city’s GIS site, you have to be logged in. They are collecting data on you NOW and this will be one more tool for them.

You must understand this the world Mayor Paul TenHaken comes from as well as his Innovation Director who ran a successful online retailer. They both ran successful businesses through helping themselves and their clients collect massive amounts of data on their clients. Paul has been busted a couple times before digging around in the dark resources of the internet. We all heard about his assistance of former Deputy Secretary of State, Powers and the doxing he did for the Rounds Campaign. This is PTH’s bag of tricks from the private sector and now he wants to take it to the next level and see if he can pull it off in government. Last I checked, the City of Sioux Falls wasn’t a fascist regime or communist state, but Paul is quickly likening himself to a Dictator.

Oh, we will hear all the excuses, “These apps and sites are there to make government more accessible for you.” Bullsh*t! They are there to allow government to have more access of YOU and what you are thinking, contemplating or even voting on.

Besides the fact the city should not be collecting this kind of data on it’s citizens, it is a waste of money. Citizens should be able to watch and respond to their government for FREE, they should also NOT be monitored when they are doing these things. They especially shouldn’t be required to ‘LOG IN’ to get information from the city. The city already monitors it’s citizens in several ways from property taxes to their water meters. Using technology to data mine on citizens unknowingly is just plain wrong and it needs to be stopped.

UPDATE: Why was the city secretly experimenting with a parking app without telling the public until caught?

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UPDATE: So I accidentally ran into someone tonight who explained the issue to me. I guess the ‘APP’ is NOT the problem, I guess the problem is the app is not communicating with our parking meters correctly. I guess the city is not using a very good telecom (not Verizon) for the communications to the meters which is causing the issue. This surprises me since the city just rolled out 5G with Verizon.

They finally announced today, but not until some folks on FB caught them. It seems to be happening at city hall a lot these days from potholes and floods to transparency, every time someone busts them they announce they are working on the issue;

The City soft launched the app in late 2018 for downtown parking ramps. Since then, the reach of the app has expanded to include many downtown parking meters. Soft launching the app to the public will help the City gain appropriate feedback to ensure potential bugs and issues are worked out before the official rollout, planned for August 2019.

So I guess the city’s innovation department is using us as lab rats for not just 5G, but now parking apps. I will post later about how Bloomberg is using our mayor as a lab rat. What I find interesting is that this gives meter maids a heads up of what meters are expired. Maybe this was a revenue idea they wanted to keep secret.

This was the response from the city;

Jason ReisdorferI appreciate everyone’s passion with regards to this app. We think it’s going to be a big win for the downtown scene. This app wasn’t built on the backs of the taxpayers and we’re not paying to have it developed. This is a free add-on to the pay by CC meters the city purchased (before my time). We compared several similar products, this one is the best option for our citizens for several reasons. We have been working closely with the app developers to work out the bugs and to get the locations geolocated properly. If you followed me at all with the ‘SF App’ launch, you will know that I promoted the heck out of it once we were ready…but it was live for several weeks in public beta before it was launched because I wanted thorough testing before a bunch of people jumped on and had issues and a bad user experience. There’s no reason that we’d want to keep something this awesome a secret…I just wanted it to work properly. I think KSFY is running a story tonight, and now that the cat is out of the bag on this, we’ll launch a presser tomorrow…but like anything new, I’d ask for your patience as we’re about 2 weeks ahead of schedule for when we wanted this thing pushed out full scale. I’m confident all you smart people can help us work out the bugs, so send me any feedback you have while using it and we’ll pass them along to the developers. Thanks for all the support! #OneSiouxFalls

Great video here;