RAPID CITY, SD — Results have been finalized by Rapid City Officials, who have declared the citizens of Rapid City have voted against the establishment of the “Destination” TIF District, with a final tally of:
All 25 precincts in:
Yes 3,415 (30%)
No 7,965 (70%)
22.32% Turn Out (11,380 out of 50,995 Voters in Rapid City)
Absentee results
Yes 961
No 2,479
It surprised me there was so many absentee, seems a lot of snowbirds voted 🙂 which is ironic considering some of the people behind the petition drive are against mail in voting.
The success of this vote doesn’t surprise me, I think if citizens have an opportunity to vote on ‘economic development’ TIFs they will vote them down, they just don’t have any payback to the average Joe and actually cost us in higher property taxes and retail taxes. Notice our legislature keeps trying to shift tax burdens onto the consumer, it is regressive and idiotic and for every penny paid in retail taxes one penny gets taken out of the local economy. Horrible way to fund government.
So with the petition drive going on with the Data Center, it may be time to keep those clipboards warm for another one.
Yesterday at one of the City Council meetings there was a gentle mention that this development was coming back. If you read what I posted, you will notice that the TIF for this development was ONLY approved by the Planning Commission and that was in July of 2024. The project got stalled so the city council NEVER approved a TIF or final development plan, that means if they are resurrecting this project it will have to go thru the same process as it did 2 years ago. They will have to present a new development plan and TIF proposal. If the TIF proceeds are for any NON infrastructure upgrades we could challenge the TIF with another petition drive and I think we should. Citizens really should be deciding on their own property tax increases and not letting a vote by a meaningless board decide. So I hope the new development doesn’t include a TIF, but if it does, I smell a petition drive.
Oh, and the developer is from out-of-state, so we would essentially being subsidizing an out-of-state developer welfare queen. We can’t even launder money locally anymore 🙁
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: So DN decided to do another story about the Data Center, and they got it right this time;
The issue is what could happen to this land. Two items were decided for a data center. The vote to approve rezoning for the land paves the way for the data center. In another item, the preliminary plan for the gemini addition was originally voted down, then reconsidered, and passed with another vote.
See, when you actually WATCH the meeting, you see what happened, but the headline was misleading;
Out of order: attendees react to city council vote on data center
The only people out of order at that meeting was the city council for approving this and the TV media who didn’t even bother covering this. I also noticed the city has been telling the media this;
A spokesperson for the city says proper and legal protocol was followed.
Who is this ‘spokesperson’? The janitor at Carnegie Hall? I think it is funny that the city attorney can’t even be honest about being a source. Loser. Sure the law was followed, but it was fast tracked. This land should NOT have been annexed for another 16 years! And it gets done in a matter of months. Was it legal? Sure. But it sure is shaky as HELL and someone with deep pockets and lawyer friends could challenge this. And before the 1st reading I also questioned the legality of the compatibility study;
Notice it says N/A. That means there is no legal grounds to pass this. NONE! ZILCH! ZERO!
Reminds me of a fight at Carnegie in 2015 when they had an opportunity to approve a solar farm in this same area and at that time it was in the joint jurisdiction area and NOT annexed into the city. There was a huge pissing match about it between council and commissioners. It would have failed by ONE vote anyway, even if the city wasn’t involved because tie votes with the commission results in a failure. I think about this, because right now we could be enjoying electricity from this plot of land instead of sucking juice. Such a huge missed opportunity. At the time there were all these promises about building houses in that area and that is why they opposed it. Never happened, now we are facing a data farm.
I often tell folks that local politicians are HORRIBLE at predicting the future.
There is also a rumor swirling that more land adjacent to this site is being bought up to build an even bigger data farm. Folks are checking into this. If true it means the developer of this project hasn’t been honest with the public about expansion. I know shocker. Ironically he probably wanted to tell the public but maybe his bodyguard talked him out of it. Yes, the developer of the project had a bodyguard following him around at the meeting. That should tell you what kind of person this is. If you have to hire a bodyguard to go to a public meeting, it is pretty obvious what you do for a living 🙂 Chew on that one!
In other news, I may be bringing back the DaCola podcast. I may be recording a PILOT with some other podcasters in the coming weeks about the upcoming city election. Wish me luck. They built a studio so the podcast will also have video and posted on YouTube. If I told you who built the studio, you wouldn’t believe me 🙂
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I think it is time to recall them.
There is a discussion going on in the background (I am NOT involved) about doing a petition drive to overturn this, which is good. But getting 8K sigs in 20 days is a heavy lift that will take hundreds of volunteers, BUT, if they decided to do this, they should circulate multiple petitions, you are out there collecting anyway so here they are;
• Revoke the annexation of the Data Center land
• Revoke the rezone
• Revoke the site plan
• A recall petition on every city councilor and mayor
I think on the last one we have 90 days to collect.
It is time to send a message to the city’s elected officials, you are not doing your job and actually hurting citizens personal finances. It is one thing that they are getting bad advice from the city attorney but the corruption is overwhelming. Transparency could fix this crap overnight but they are so deep in the chamber honey wagon that will never happen. And when a city government can’t function and is corrupt it needs to be booted from office. I think it would be hilarious to see two of the councilors get voted out of office that never received one single vote to get in that office. Poetic justice.
And let’s talk about the corruption, like annexing land just so a data center could be built, this was in the works for months and the council knew it. Or when councilor Spellerberg recused himself on Tre after voting on all the other items related to it. HUGE ETHICAL violation, but the rest of the council just turned the other way. Or when Marshall Selberg perjured campaign finance forms and was ILLEGALLY living out of his district for a year!!!! They didn’t do a damn thing and now he is running for Mayor (we know how this will end for the Harford resident). I even was working with them on some code enforcement solutions and getting all public meetings on YouTube. And they just ignored me after I offered suggestions. This council and mayor have no interest in representing us, so it is time for them to go and they can go serve on the Chamber board where they belong.
WHY IS TRANSPARENCY AND CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IMPORTANT?
This is the thing that bothers me the most about the council. Sure they do a ton of corrupt deals that grease their own wheels, but that is typical small town politics, it is the lack of transparency that fuels this corruption. The council knows they can’t be honest with the public because they would see all the backroom deals they are doing, and that scares them to death!!! I will give you a couple of recent examples of the council and city employees purposely covering up data in surveys so the citizenry doesn’t see how bad it is.
I filled out a copy of the Citizen Community Survey. I had one mailed to me, so I was a part of the scientific portion of the survey. They did another one online that anyone can take. I think they sent out around 4k surveys and had about 300+ respondents which is a pretty good percentage. I have been reading the final results of the surveys for the past 20 years. The city usually posts the reports online. This year was different. The comment section was missing. In the past they usually print some of the comments, positive and negative. This tells me most if not all were negative so they pulled them from the survey. I contacted the massive polling company that did the survey and requested the comment section. They have been giving me the runaround because they think I’m going to use the data nefariously. Nope, just gonna post it on my site. I told them 3 times in an email that I am a citizen of SF who took the survey and paid for the survey and I would like to have a copy of the comments. Still no response. In my last email I told them I was just going to contact management. I will get those comments 🙂
Another example is the missing survey files for the future of Frank Olson Park. I guess most surveyed said while they would like a new pool at Frank Olson, nobody wanted a bond (they said just pull from reserves) but instead the council bonded it even though the neighborhood was opposed, you know, like buying an old rec center that no one wanted. As I have said in the past, the bonding companies and contractors in town throw a bonding number at the city each year and makes them find a project to fit the dollar amount they want. They don’t care what it is. So the city conveniently hides surveys that paint a different picture. Don’t believe me, look at the budgets for the past 16 years, there is always a bond in there or a couple of projects we don’t need. Nobody wanted a rec center at Frank Olson except the bonding companies. And the survey says . . . .
Also, remember the GIFT of $1 Million from the Kirbys? At the presser the parks director said they could not spend the money to offset the bond. Guess why that is? Because the way the bond ordinance is written is that they cannot spend less then what the bond is only more, usually thru change orders. So basically the Kirby’s will be covering the cost of a nice sign and change orders. Thank you. But would they ever tell the public that bonds are not flexible? Why do you think we were forced to build the bunker ramp? We were bound by contract in the bond. We could have lawyered up and paid some fines and got out of it, but that would have required our mayor having something between his legs besides a fanny pack.
OUR LOCAL TV MEDIA IS IN THE BAG WITH THE CITY
After my rant last night at the city council meeting about our mentally challenged TV media I expected a story about the Data Centers, except they didn’t have anyone at the meeting, that was obvious when you read this sentence in the DN story this morning;
When the meeting resumed, a few votes had changed, but it was not enough to keep the measure from being approved.
LOL. Um, that is NOT what happened, but OK poli-sci major!
UPDATE: I guess Rich Merkouris talked about the MCC and Data Centers on this podcast. Ellis tried to claim that if this Data Center meets the criteria of the rezone the council doesn’t have a choice but to approve it. Yes, this is TRUE, but they DON’T meet the criteria;
As you can see compatibility should be somewhere between 1-5. If any of those numbers are 4 or below they CAN deny the re-zone. This is EVEN worse since the Compatibility is NA. WTH?
As for the MCC they did apply for funding and were denied. But it sounds like they may be working on something. Sneve asked him if the public is perceiving the council as prejudice towards immigrants by cutting these programs. Merkouris said he didn’t see the correlation because they fund the Dudley house and that population is diverse. That is true, but most of them are natural born citizens and not immigrants, also there is difference between teaching English and housing someone on a cold night. A big difference. And if you don’t educate immigrants they may end up at the Dudley.
We all know why this happening. It’s Trump’s war on brown people and the orgs that provide services to them. It has been a wet dream of Republiscum for decades to kill Luthern Social Services. I guess I don’t care WHO teaches immigrants English, maybe the School District should be doing it but killing needed services without having a full review of their programming is awful. According to Merkouris this went thru several review processes (all in closed door behind the scenes meetings). They just never learn!!!! And that is the one thing that bothered me most about the interview. Ellis and Sneve of course take the side of government and feel they should approve the Data Centers because they are simply following the law (they are NOT) and the citizens opinion doesn’t matter (Sneve made a wisecrack about it.) I would expect those two to say these things, but what astonished me was how Merkouris kept justifying these steps by following the proper procedures (they are not, because this stuff is not being done transparently). Not one single time did Merkouris acknowledge he works for the people of this community, and I think that says it all. We know who butters the council’s bread, and it ain’t Joe Smoe.
As for approving the Data Centers under current zoning regs that part is also troublesome. It is obvious to me they are trying to pull permits and break ground before July 1, 2026. Why? Because if the legislature passes regs this session they would likely go into affect on July 1st, so if they start building before then they don’t have to follow the new laws because they will be grandfathered in.
To tell you the truth, the council should just defer this rezone until July 2, 2026, and force them to follow the new regs. But that would take foresight and vision. 🙂
Original Post ——–
So when the mayor dropped his bomb right before Christmas eliminating funding for MCC and several other non-profits I suspected the council would be working behind the scenes to restore the funding or work out a long-term solution. Who am I freaking kidding?! So I went radio silence after the announcement because I wanted to see how the council would handle this without me rattling them. I usually email, call or text 1 or 2 councilors a week. Ever since this announcement I have said nothing and I have not gotten any messages from them about what they are working on.
They are ‘probably’ working on something behind the scenes, but it is radio silence. I also found the timing of the cancellation a total A$$HOLE move. But we don’t need to go into that.
When there are hot topics with the city I usually have a couple of people ask me about the issue. On this one, people are crawling over each other to talk to me about it. No kidding. Last night at the Orion Pub I had over a dozen individuals ask me about it. I know that’s not scientific, but shocking to me. It’s bad and the little game of cutting funding right before Christmas when city government is on a 2 week vacation is NOT encouraging.
Believe it or not, I am urging the council to do NOTHING. Let this funding relapse occur.
So why do I want them to do nothing?
I watched the library funding fiasco and how the council was put in a corner because of the turd in the corner office. Don’t do this again! Let the mayor own this. Let the public inform him of his bad decisions. You let this guy get away with soooo much, then you take the blame, and cry in the corner. Probably one of the weakest councils I have seen in 20 years. You need to eat more STEAK! LOL.
DATA CENTER NEEDS TO BE KILLED AT THE BALLOT BOX
As I mentioned before I think a petition drive CAN be done to stop this, but it will take HUNDREDS of volunteers and the cooperation of many orgs. I have mentioned these before;
• Sustainability Task Force (these folks spent months developing a plan only for the mayor to have his pumpkin pusher take a leak on it).
• National Dem Party, the State Dem party or at least the Minnehaha County Dems.
• The mayoral campaigns of Batcheller and Smith.
• Knobe’s group The Change Makers.
• Indivisible 605 (They organize the No Kings Rallies, and actually have one planned on the same day the council will approve the rezone on Data Center. The rally ends at 5 PM and I would encourage everyone to attend and speak at the city council meeting at 6 PM against the rezone, even if they will still vote yes, this will be important to the petition drive publicity).
I think these folks, if teamed together could get 10,000 sigs in less then 24 days! I would also unify advocates! I often roll my eyes at supposed local advocacy groups who write a couple letters to the editor and send STERN emails to legislators. Give it up. Real advocacy happens in the field, talking to folks on the ground.
I think this petition drive could be uniting, even if you don’t get the sigs or some judge with deep pockets in the city throws it out, it will send a clear message that the citizens are fed up with the city council making poor decisions that affect our daily lives and expenses.
We WILL SEE if these groups act or just drink tea, eat gummies and write letters that no one reads 🙂 Kinda like how I run my blog 🙂 and that is why I could never do it alone. Hey folks! It takes a village! But yah gotta leave your hut.
The new bike trail spur from Falls Park to Bahnson has basically been open, but they don’t plow it. They barely finished it before winter set in, so there really hasn’t been an unveiling but it is completed. Before the project was even finished this Fall this rock showed up. I found it funny that they had to make sure the sponsor rock was there before anything else. Pathetic.
Notice it is Broin, you know, the folks involved with Tre (Lyre) Ministries. I still think there is a ton of corruption going on with that project, but I just can’t finger it. But I am working on it. Ethanol is a scam, probably bigger then bottled water.
l3wis 
