Open Government

1st Amendment Mayor TenHaken Open Government Open Meetings Sioux Falls

Will the next mayor of Sux will be handed a gigantic stinkin’ turd?

l3wis August 6, 2025 1Comments

As Poops’ term is coming to end, many directors and managers are announcing their retirement or resignation. Directors are leaving from most of the major departments and several assistant directors and deputies are also leaving.

First, the obvious question? Why are so many leaving throughout the organization? It is not uncommon for directors to resign after a mayor ends their term, some are just brought in for the administration and don’t expect to stay afterwards, but this many directors and management leaving after a mayor leaves is a bit suspicious.

There has been a lot of gossip and rumors from various sources that the city got investigated for financial reasons. I have heard a whole host of reasons why, but nothing solid, so I’m VERY SKEPTICAL this occurred (besides an ARPA audit), but it makes you scratch your head a bit when pretty much Poops entire administrative team is leaving with him. Are they gonna leave the next mayor holding the bag? What will the books look like? Good question.

There is a positive in all these resignations, the next Mayor will be able to pick their team, but this will take several months and hundreds of interviews. I would encourage the next mayor to hire a national recruiter to find qualified employees instead of depending on our internal HR department. But this will still make the first year of the mayorship difficult for the next mayor because they won’t have a permanent team in place when they are sworn in.

So what do these directors know that we don’t? Not sure. This has been the most secretive administration in the history of our city. Huether tried to cover up stuff, but he was really bad at it, Poops turned it into an art form, and if there is one thing he has accomplished it has been a militant closed government.

I hope the next mayor is transparent with the public and tell us what kind of damage the current mayor incurred upon us, but with being ‘SD NICE’ they will likely just sweep it under the rug and not look back. While I agree we shouldn’t dwell on past indiscretions, we should be told what they were, so the public can make sure we never elect or hire folks like this again. History is important, and if we don’t learn from it, well, you know what happens.

1st Amendment Curt Soehl Downtown Sioux Falls Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls City Council Chair doesn’t like being yelled at

l3wis April 9, 2025 4Comments

Curtist the Blurtist had a plan last night. He pulled an item from the consent agenda. The city was allocating $150K for two new ambassadors for DTSF. While I think it is awesome DTSF is creating jobs, I doubt the employees are making $75K each for the summer, but as DTSF says they need money for ‘training’. LOL. Why did Curt pull the item? Because he thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about the great thing these ambassadors are doing. Well, he was wrong. While our country is going into a tailspin because of a very stupid person, constituents are NOT happy, and they certainly won’t be happy about the city spending more money on the transient issue by spending more money NOT ON THEM!

So some constituents weighed in, and it wasn’t pretty. While they were certainly not friendly in their testimonies, they weren’t wrong. After the trip to the woodshed, Curt was unhappy so he said something like, “I didn’t know we were going to get yelled at . . .” First off, Curt, that is really your main job, listening to constituent complaints, and secondly if you want to POP off at constituents during a meeting you are VIOLATING a rule MMM put in place, NO CONSTITUENT INTERACTION WHILE THEY ARE AT THE PODIUM. So Curt, if you want to change the rules, which I am ALL for, to allow councilors to interact with constituents during public input, DO IT! But until that rule change is made I suggest you such your pie hole and take it like a big kid, or better yet RESIGN. Your disdain for public engagement is getting old, like you (as you pointed out in the meeting.)

Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council Sioux Falls

City of Sioux Falls still can’t get agenda page to work correctly

l3wis April 4, 2025 2Comments

SIRE, the system that the city council has used for years for their agendas and videos is broke, again. This system has been acting up since the days of MMM. How can a system be permanently broke for over a decade?! Well it came to a boiling point last week when the audit committee meeting had to continue to recess because the streaming system didn’t work. The meeting is posted now but you will see all the problems with it. Some would say this is just a hard problem to solve, but with hundreds of hours of staffers trying to fix it and millions in service fees you would think it would be fixed by now. Nope. This isn’t incompetence it is being done on purpose to make the government less transparent.

If you look at the ‘recent’ tab on the agenda page you will see now they list the oldest meeting first so you have to scroll all the way to the bottom to find the newest meeting. WHY!? They changed this recently.

I have said for a long time almost all the local government entities around us and in the state live stream their meetings on YouTube so you can pause them or watch them again right after they finish. It is also a FREE service, and since the city live streamed other events like pressers, their is absolutely no reason they could not use it for council meetings. If someone wants to see the agenda they can go to the city website you can also LINK that page under the YT live stream video.

Like I said, this all started with Mike the Maniac and his control over the media and staff ‘leaks’. But he has been gone for 7 years! FIX IT ALREADY!

1st Amendment Bishop Dudley House Downtown Sioux Falls Homeless Mayor TenHaken Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council

The City of Sioux Falls doesn’t understand transparency and open government

l3wis March 31, 2025 7Comments

Here we go again, concocting some ‘solution’ for an issue in the city and not bringing the public along in that ‘solution’;

City officials say more information on a $150,000 marketing campaign aimed at addressing “nuisance behavior” and discouraging panhandling in downtown Sioux Falls is coming soon.

There have been several ‘rumored’ ordinances that are awaiting the council’s approval including making it illegal (trespassing/camping) in our parks. But why not have a public discussion where the citizens can offer solutions?

Asked for an update this week, TenHaken’s communications officer Vanessa Gomez said, “I would expect us to be able to share more in the next month or so.”

So what’s the big secret? If you are instituting new laws shouldn’t you tell the public in advance? My guess is that they are going to be very controversial and I wouldn’t doubt the ACLU gets involved. Just like the Brockhouse animals you are going to drop this in our laps at the last minute.

I told a city official last week that every country and community that has either solved homelessness or made virtually invisible did it one way; Transitional housing. I suggested the city buy four Tzadik properties on bank foreclosure, remodel them to be 1 bedroom and studios and gift them to the St. Francis house and offer them a yearly subsidy for handling the transitional housing. We seem to be throwing money at ad agencies to educate the public, but we are doing very little to actually help these folks. For $150K you could house 25 people for a year!

I suggest that moving forward, the council tells us what they are planning, and NOT next month, TODAY!

1st Amendment Canton Downtown Sioux Falls Harrisburg School District Mayor TenHaken Open Government Open Meetings Sioux Falls Tea

Is this proof that Mayor TenHaken is actively pursuing closed government?

l3wis January 4, 2025 5Comments

Not sure, but I will lay this out for you. Around a year ago or so MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization of Sioux Falls) had a zoom meeting. At the meeting were several city administrators I believe from Tea, Canton and Mayor TenHaken. The city manager of Harrisburg could NOT attend so he designated a private contractor who was the city’s acting (part-time) planning director at the time (they just recently pulled back after hiring Watertown’s Planning person). The ‘fill-in’ at the meeting said the discussion quickly turned to the dividing line between SF and Harrisburg and Poops adamant distinction of HWY 101 being that line. The ‘fill-in’, a former city of Sioux Falls engineer, disagreed with the mayor and said that is not ‘definitive’ and never has been. Then the mayor proceeded to accuse this person of lying about what he ‘knows’ and what he believes (I am still waiting for the minutes from the meeting). Besides the meeting itself being a little rough and contentious it was what Poops did after the meeting that was really petty. He instructed that MPO changes it’s meeting rules only to include city employees as fill-ins and not private contractors. While I agree, seemed it a little odd you would send your private contractor to this meeting, BUT, they were discussing planning and development and he was the acting planning director for Harrisburg, so it made sense at the time. I just find it incredibly insecure and petty to make a rule change because you didn’t like a private citizen telling you what was up in an a official meeting so you change the rules. You got a lot of issues man.

Will the next mayor of Sux will be handed a gigantic stinkin’ turd?

Sioux Falls City Council Chair doesn’t like being yelled at

City of Sioux Falls still can’t get agenda page to work correctly

The City of Sioux Falls doesn’t understand transparency and open government

Is this proof that Mayor TenHaken is actively pursuing closed government?

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The Libertarian Media Hypocrisy

UPDATE: ‘This Sucks!’ Yes it does.

Will the next mayor of Sux will be handed a gigantic stinkin’ turd?

UPDATE: A sigh of relief