South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

Minnehaha County

County Commission David Barranco Downtown Sioux Falls Minnehaha County Property Taxes SF City Council Sioux Falls Taxes

Bikes, Bonds and Belittling

l3wis 8Comments

Not sure if you caught the above meeting, but it was a scorcher. While I would agree with Minnehaha County Commissioner Joe Kippley that Leah shouldn’t be fooling around with past elections, I don’t agree with him asking her to resign in public. He should have wrote her a letter, got a couple of his other commissioners on board and CC’d the media. It was extremely unprofessional, and the kicker is he is the health director for the city. Getting ‘political’, which was what his stunt was, is not the ethical standard I want my health director to be holding. If anything Joe should resign because of his conflicts, and I have a feeling he will AFTER the November election so they can appoint someone. More trickery. Oh, and the commission has allegedly been playing games with bond levies. More to come on that 🙁

COUNCIL KICKS THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD ON THE RIVERLINE DISTRICT

At the council meeting last night the council took the line item out of the 2025 budget and concocted a steering committee to study the purchase. While I’m happy they killed the line item, I am not happy they are continuing down the path which will ultimately have us buying the land. From talking to councilors I got the feeling they were just going to kill it and let the River Rats figure it out, but this must be the compromise. Folks, all this is, is smoke and mirrors by the council. They plan to implement a 3rd penny tax to have us paid for the Convention Center. This is short-sighted. They should implement a entertainment corporate tax on all business with 500 or more employees. If you think this place will have an economic impact on your businesses, prove it, pony up.

Oh, and Councilor Barranco was the ONLY councilor to vote against a property tax increase. Thank You David! That vote proved to me that at least 7 councilors don’t give a rat’s ass what economic position you are in, they need their play palaces!

E-BIKES HAVE INVADED DOWNTOWN

Not really, but some people seem to be butt hurt they are sitting around downtown. They are not junkers, so I am not sure what people are concerned about. Other cities do it this way. I think the only tweak I would make is having the bikes in a mobile unit so they are not scattered everywhere downtown, but like I said, there is a million other things we need to worry about downtown, and a random bike parked on a corner ain’t one of them.

WAS HARRIS DEBATING BIDEN LAST NIGHT?

After the first 10 minutes of the debate last night I thought Harris was debating Biden.

Audit Leah Anderson Minnehaha County

If you got sometin’ to say, say it to my face

l3wis 4Comments

Elected officials should avoid social media. I used to tell this to Theresa all the time. I will defend Leah on one point; She is an elected official and if she wants to play on TurdBook all day, that is her deal, and they ain’t much you can do about it. Mayor Munson used to say, “Mayor is 24/7, 365 day a year job.” In other words, as an elected official you are always on duty.

Downtown Sioux Falls Minnehaha County Sioux Falls The Link

City of Sioux Falls claims they have nothing to do with the Link

l3wis 1Comments

The Darkness at City Hall was taken to a whole new level this week when the city said this about denying Forum News a copy of the contract with the Link;

The City of Sioux Falls has denied a request to make public the contract to operate The Link, the publicly funded triage center for people in crisis from addiction or mental illness.

Sioux Falls Live requested the contract from the city on July 17. The city denied that request on Monday, July 31.

The reason given for the denial is that the contract is not technically with the city, but rather with the non-profit created to run The Link, according to Paul M. Bengford, senior assistant city attorney.

“The City of Sioux Falls is not a party to the Agreement you are seeking,” Bengford wrote in a statement denying the request.

WOW!

‘Yeah, you know, that building the city owns and leases for FREE to the Link and helps subsidize with city and county taxpayer money, yeah, we really don’t know much about that.’

The Link was setup BY the city and county, it is occupied in a city owned building. If anyone would have the contract and know what is in it, it would be the city.

Oh, and to state the obvious;

“The Link is an important community resource, and there’s interest in knowing how it’s operating,” said Mary Jo Hotzler, chief content officer for Forum Communications Co., parent company to Sioux Falls Live. “Our interest is in transparency and accountability.”

Heck, I can’t even get an annual report from a non-profit that provides free concerts, what makes you think you get this contract? Maybe there is no contract;

During a city council meeting in July, which included approval of a new three-year agreement between the partners, TenHaken said the source of new funding was “TBD.”

It kind of sounds like most things the city does . . . by the seat of their pants. Recently it was said that the city is looking for a recruiting contractor to help find more mid-management, skilled positions. Maybe the city is having problems finding these people because no one wants to work for a certain somebody. I’ve seen morale take a 180 at places I have worked after certain troublesome management is let go. Maybe the city has an image problem?

I tell people it must be a great place to work, I saw a mid-manager at a meeting a couple of months ago wearing sweatpants and sliders, surprised he wasn’t curled up in the corner with a pillow and a blankey.

With all this darkness lately, it makes you wonder if this is about keeping information from the public or keeping information from a higher authority, and I ain’t talking about JC.

1st Amendment County Commission Minnehaha County SF City Council Sioux Falls

Daily Affirmation

l3wis 3Comments

What a week of craziness in Sioux Falls. Most of what I am going to talk about deserves a full blog post, but I decided more of a snark;

• Classified documents at Carnegie Town Hall. Last night a constituent told me they showed up to the city council meeting and went to the entry podium to collect the agenda. To their surprise there was a stack of legal documents sitting on the podium. They suspected they were left there accidentally and turned them over to the council.

At least they didn’t find them crumpled up in the toilet.

• The Sioux Falls City Council hires a new city clerk. Mr. Washington was hired Tuesday night by the council. Mr. Washington was NOT in attendance (he lives in Rapid City) but I was at least expecting a phone in to answer a few benign questions. Nope. Council Chair Selberg said he was a great guy and they voted for him. The council did have a private interview with Mr. Washington but it would have been nice to get an intro to the public.

• 1st Amendment Minnehaha County case taking to long to decide. Call me old school, but when I read the 1st Amendment it is not to hard to figure out, especially this line;

to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I’m puzzled why it would take so long for a Federal Judge to make such an easy decision? It will be interesting to see what is carved out for the county, because it doesn’t take over 20 days to figure out our civil rights.

• Minnehaha County Commissioners bail on carbon setbacks. Not surprising the new bought and paid for MCC has decided that property owners only get 300 feet to save themselves from an exploding pipeline. How thoughtful of them. I still concede that in 10 years most hazardous pipelines are moth balled as we realize the benefits and cost saving measures of wind, solar and nuclear. This is a money making scheme and always has been.

• Pride Festival this weekend! The good news is we get to celebrate LOVE this weekend, the sad part is there are still elected officials in our community who refuse to acknowledge that love. F’k em! They would ruin the party anyway!

• YIELD FOR BICYCLISTS! I was in three close calls this week, one was my fault, but I encourage drivers to always be aware of your surroundings and look for pedestrians, motorcycles and bicyclists. I also encourage bicyclists to be sharp when riding and yield twice.

• Rapid City gets a new mayor! So this former Veteran, Banker, Alderman and current Pastor wants to be the next mayor of Rapid City. Awesome! I still liked the O’SHT face on him when he had his first presser. He’s going to figure it out. Well if you are so inclined to share your secret recipes, can you pass them on to our mayor? You can usually catch him doing calisthenics with kids at one of our private Sioux Falls Christian schools. I know, super weird.

• Show me the money! Once again city officials had no problem taking money from our old father time and faux namesake of our city. Gifts are Gifts but one has to wonder about funding a spray park for kids with a selfie photo booth? Not to mention a project that has ballooned from around $4 million to four times that. Not sure why we need Disneyland at Falls Park?

The ‘donations’ always crack me up. They are paying for ADDITIONAL infrastructure that we have to maintain for decades as taxpayers. Not sure what the benefit is? It’s kind of like being handed your dream car for free (mine is the Ferrari Dino) but you have to maintain it, pay the taxes and fees on it, store it and insure it. I will stick with my Civic.

• More rail traffic in Sioux Falls. I have virtually given up moving the trains out of Sioux Falls, but what troubles me is that citizens have no avenue of addressing this locally, statewide or Federally. Ironically, roadblocks have been systematically setup over decades by the vicious control by our railroads.

1st Amendment County Commission Minnehaha County Theresa Stehly

Stehly; It’s about the petitioner’s right, not the issue

l3wis 1Comments

Former Sioux Falls City Councilor, Theresa Stehly addressed the Minnehaha County Commission during public input today (FF 1:02). Stehly points out that it doesn’t matter if you are for or against an issue, you should still support people’s right to petition.

She also wondered why the auditor and the MCC hasn’t been more helpful helping citizens petition.

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