I have complained about outgoing Councilors and School Board members recruiting replacements in the past, now it is moving to the Sheriff’s office;
Captain Josh Phillips launched his campaign for Minnehaha County Sheriff after receiving an endorsement from Sheriff Mike Milstead on Wednesday.
I found it funny that just a few hours after Mike announced his retirement Josh had all his paperwork ready to announce his candidacy. Mike announced his retirement on the Belfrage show and I was actually listening live because Belfrage is my morning laughs. Then a few hours later Josh announces.
Obviously Mike brought Josh in on his retirement before announcing because Josh had all his paperwork ready to file. It was a bad look. I would have waited a week.
Josh does have a lot of experience, but I hope he has a challenger because this statement had me automatically NOT voting for him;
“I believe deeply in conservative South Dakota values, respect for the Constitution, and responsible use of taxpayer dollars. I will use my experience to keep our neighborhoods safe,” says Capt. Phillips.
Hey Josh, not all SD values are conservative. My grandparents on both sides were proud SD Dems, and they weren’t radical left lunatics. Sioux Falls and Minnehaha County are very purple, and when you say crap like this, you lose a lot of voters. I am hoping someone from out of state runs that has lived here for a few years and has actual law enforcement experience outside of this county.
As for Mike, he has been a good sheriff. I actually interviewed him for the blog several years ago, and it was probably one of my best interviews. Him and his wife, a former legislator, really turned MAGA the last couple of years and I do know they have lost a lot of political friends because of it. Which is unfortunate.
I was disappointed that Mike stooped to the recruitment politics, but when you run government in a state of paranoia, these are the people we get. They are so afraid their non-vetted replacements will uncover their misdeeds they have to find a replacement that will be complicit on their past. It’s local weasel politics at it’s best and worst.
Yesterday we all got the same Amber Alert; 10 yr/old Native American Male, Joel Takenalive.
At first I didn’t think anything of it, until several news orgs were reporting what the Amber Alert actually said, which was incorrect;
I could only find two news organizations, who probably realized that his name was spelled incorrectly in the Amber Alert, spell his name correctly; Joel Tanken Alive, you know, because he is a Native American. I wonder if Joel would have been found sooner (thank God he is safe!) if they would have spelled his name correct in the Amber Alert? And how long did it take the other news orgs to realize the spelling error?
When I hear all this talk about law enforcement cooperation, I tell people they have to be transparent with us and we will work with them. The Devil is in the Details.
The city is set to start the next phase of the Minnesota Avenue rebuild between 2nd Street and 7th Street this Spring. The project will be $15 Million+. In the process they wanted to put pavers along Minnesota like in front of the City Center, and they want the stone reset in front of the City Center. So an independent contractor suggested to the city that when they put the pavers down Minnesota and reset the ones at the City Center they should pour a concrete pad underneath so they can’t sink and weeds don’t grow in them. I think they even suggested the faux poured pavers that are on Phillips Avenue. Nope, I guess they are going to go old school and just put it on sand so it will have to be redone in 10 years.
While I was talking to this gentleman he went on another rant about the engineering department at the city. He said they come and go as they please and he said, ‘Good luck getting anyone on the phone down there or responding to voicemails.’ He said a lot of other unflattering things also. I joked with him, ‘I have been saying for years they should fire all the city engineers and just hire a purchasing agent to replace them.’ Right now all city engineers do is read and approve engineering reports from independent contractors. They also write the RFPs.
I asked him what he thought of my theory that the Feds threatened the city over funding if they didn’t approve the data center. He said that it was a possibility since every department in the city gets money from the Feds. He agreed with my theory, ‘What if the city does everything the Feds want them to do and they still cut our funding? Then what?’ The city should just prepare for the budget shortfall until 2028 and lay off any city employees who receives department funding thru the Feds. Also, it is Congress that controls the purse strings and last I checked we have 3 Republicans representing us in DC, are they going to allow this kind of bullying? Trump just stopped a water project in Colorado for 50K residents because he is mad about that stupid bitch who broke so many state election laws that she got 9 years in state prison and Trump has threatened to bust her out using the Military. Something about a tank ramming the jail. Crazy crap. So his threats of budget cuts? Who cares and let’s just hope he gets a new pharmacist soon.
As for the Data Center I have two friends that work in the industry in Sioux Falls, and they have been sending me different information on how they work etc. They said that most of the Data Centers in Sioux Falls are no more then 30 MW (that is the largest) this proposed Data Center is 500 MW. Look at the power generation capacity we have;
So where will this power come from? Good question.
Most Data Centers have Server Racks in them and even some of the bigger ones in Sioux Falls only have a handful of employees with half of them handling security and janitorial. This is a power cord for just ONE rack of servers. It is about 4x the diameter of of a 210 power cord.
I’m hoping the petition drive is successful in stopping this, but I still think it could be stopped with a court order.
UPDATE: HOLY SH!TTTTT!!!!! So the council votes for the rezone, BUT denies the development plan. Then at the end of the meeting they did a reconsideration then approved the plan. Cowards. I have never seen a council pull such a chickensh!t move ever. I have been watching these since Hanson.
I told the council tonight during public input that if they pass this, that they just don’t care. And they proved me right, 7-0 (Barranco was absent, SMART MAN!) They all got in line and voted on a rezone that they fast tracked this summer under the radar. And I loved that part, because I suckered the dipsh!ts into admitting what they did. During my input I told them that the vote was ILLEGAL because of the fast tracked annexation and that the people who live in that part of the county are NOT represented by them. Well that ruffled their feathers so they started throwing legal questions at Fiddle (I was giggling at home) after public input trying to justify the legality (I knew it was legal, I just wanted to hear the excuses). So during their GOTCHA period they had to admit they fast tracked this. Morons. They can’t even cover their tracks. As for a petition drive, a few people approached me tonight that they plan on doing one. So that is good. I also brought up during my testimony that our TV media in Sioux Falls is WORTHLESS because they waited until the day of the 2nd reading to do a story about this. The crowd was laughing. But I was serious. They suck and they are in the bag with city government, it is disgusting. But after the vote, the real fireworks happened, and I figured it would. As folks were walking out they called the council about every name in the book, and not the good book. Damn, I thot I was watching Chapelle. LOL. I also found it funny that when the council was justifying their votes they only talked about the tax revenue and not one single one of them brought up our rates going up. They also justified it because there are other data centers in Sioux Falls. REALLY?!? Yeah, those are clerical, NOT AI, big diffo. But hey, they almost saved the day by denying the preliminary plan, 4-3, then bringing it back and voting for it. You were almost ready to govern, maybe in a few months;
One last rant about the night, man I could do play by play with Lalley and have a blast about this meeting, this one is going down in the history books and please Cameraman Bruce, throw this one on YouTube. Anyhoo, before public input on the Data Center, Paul told people they had to say the name of the town they are from. No they do not, it is a violation of your 1st Amendment rights. He is clueless. Paul actually got his ass handed to him tonight from the public for once. Thank You. I think I’m going to do a best of clip, especially the part where he gavels clappers. Good stuff. Or when the very nice mom told Paul to check his quote with Kelo. LOL.
It was nice to see so many people show up last night and make relevant points. They got to see our ineffective city council and mayor at work(?). And what is up with Paul’s obsession with knowing who is dissenting him? It’s weird, it’s like he is stalking us. Can an entire city put a restraining order on him? LOL. Remember last year he admitted in a podcast that he looks at people’s FB profile if they make a negative comment on his page. Yeah, he’s that guy. Metro-Yeti Karen. Before last night I told folks I have lost all hope with this current council and mayor, they are living in la la land. I knew the lack of transparency in the city would eventually collapse in on itself and that happened last night, and notice, I didn’t see a single TV camera there, shocker. But at least they covered the other weasels giving themselves a ridiculous raise during this horrific economy. I hope our tone deaf Charter Revision Commission puts a similar raise proposal on the ballot for council and mayor so I can watch it fail by 80% of the vote, but these clowns still won’t get it, they’ll try again next year.
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This is just the re-zone. The company will have to have final plans approved by the planning commission and city council. As I have told advocacy groups and individuals, this is getting approved and the only way to stop this is with a petition drive, but I still question the legal authority of the Sioux Falls city council to pass this. This is NOT within city limits. In other words, the folks that live in this district (likely a township and NOT residents of Brandon or Sioux Falls) will have officials NOT elected by them making decisions about land use. It would be like the township board voting on a gas station re-zone within the northern most city limits of Sioux Falls. Not their jurisdiction, just like this is NOT. It is called the joint-jurisdiction area that still needs to be annexed in Sioux Falls. Until that annexation happens, the county and the township should have the final authority on this re-zone. I think there could be legal challenges to this as well as a petition drive. I know it would be complicated, but I think the petition drive could reflect a special election within the township this rezone resides. Probably only need 100 valid sigs.
WE WILL SEE ON WEDNESDAY MORNING
I’ll be waiting for all of these ‘supposed’ advocacy groups to present their petition Wednesday morning, but I am not holding my breath. I think they continue to beat their heads against the wall for job security reasons.
I think the thing that bothers me the most besides all the shady legal authority surrounding this rezone is our water and energy costs going up and our elected officials don’t seem to care. It is pretty sad.
Trust me, I am not fan of this couple who want to take us back to 1952;
In the video the couple wanted an answer to a simple question, “How much is the extra holiday pay costing county taxpayers.” Of course, no answer, because that would mean collaborative and open government. Even a commissioner asked Tom Greco, county administrator, what the amount was and still did not get an answer from Tom. It’s not a hard question. What is your daily receipts on salaries? That is the magic number. I’m sure almost everyone on that dais knows what it costs to pay salaries for a day at the county. And I agree with the couple that the policy of not answering taxpayer questions needs to end. These are public meetings. Do you understand what the word ‘public’ means? Now this couple can be a bit crazy. They want us to go to hand counting which is less reliable and takes longer, they usually cuss and demean the commissioners, and usually something racist comes from their mouths, as today the man decided to make fun of Juneteenth in this testimony saying, “Nobody knows what the Hell that is.” I’m pretty sure some African Americans in our community could fill you in. Either way, asking a question, saying stupid Trump garbage, or going over your time by a couple of seconds doesn’t permit you to eject someone from a meeting, that is violation of their 1st Amendment rights. Sure, you can ask them to sit down and stop swearing, but you can’t kick them out because you don’t like the questions they ask. The irony is, the question still wasn’t answered. I hope that he sues the county for 1st amendment violations, and I can’t believe an officer went along with it. I know that the (previous) security at city council meetings quit because the mayor wanted them to arrest and remove people who were saying things he didn’t like and they refused telling him that is a 1st Amendment violation. I think Karsky is going to be regretting his decision when the county is dowling out millions in a 1st Amendment suit to a nutty Trumper.
I also want to add, this couple who look like they are in their 70s, never physically threatened the commission or used any threatening language, besides it being a ‘sh!t show’ which it is.
l3wis 
