The city has already been using a private contractor at the recycling center that uses the special software to scan your driver’s license and they will deny you if you abuse the dropoff;
The Sioux Falls Regional Sanitary Landfill now will scan driver’s licenses or state ID instead of collecting the free passes. It’s still one load per household address and up to 10,000 pounds. The goal is to start the digital approach April 3 and allow residents to use the pass until the end of the year.
While I agree mailing out postcards can be costly and apartment dwellers deserve the passes as well, I think they are making this more complicated then it needs to be. You simply keep a data base of all adult residents residing in Sioux Falls with their address and when they present their ID (not scanned) at the dump, their name is searched and removed from the list after utilizing the opportunity. This could be done in under a minute by simply doing a search of the name in the data base.
Many residents have reached out to me telling me they don’t want there DL scanned and this may be an attempt to data mine more information from citizens.
While this kind of information gathering is allowed by law where it gets grey is if this information can be shared with private political campaigns or candidates. As I understand it, it can be. Mayor TenHaken learned thru his Bloomberg connections how to data mine on citizens, but what is stopping him from using this data personally to run for higher office?
The rumor mill says that Marion Mike Rounds will likely run for governor leaving a Senate seat and Congressional seat open. Dusty Johnson will likely run for Senate (with maybe a primary challenge from Noem) and TenHaken is gearing up to run for Congress (you know, the guy who hates politics and isn’t a politician 🙂
Last night during the public input time at the council meeting Vitaliy Strizheus who owns an unfinished house the city is scheduled to demolish on Monday came to plead his case to the council and public. I have avoided posting about this because 1) I really don’t care about the lifestyles of the rich and famous of Sioux Falls and 2) I do not know the details of the case including accusations that the city is discriminating based on race and what Constitutional property rights he may have. The city has a track record on this after ignoring their own building codes and allowing an oversized mansion to be built in McKennan Park.
Hopefully a Federal judge will block the demolition so we can get a clearer understanding of what is going on. But taking 10 years to complete a home is unacceptable and there should be consequences. Not sure charging taxpayers $85K to demolish and all the litigation expenses is really beneficial to the defendant or the public. I think this could have been solved in a different manner. Why can’t the city just take the home and sell it on auction?
But what I found most intriguing is while this guy is begging the city to spare his home he dawns a gold watch. He should have taken a queue from this guy at last week’s public input complaining about the uselessness of the pothole hotline. Maybe Carhartt Kent had a gold watch under his coveralls but I am guessing NOT.
While the Sioux Falls City Council still has an opportunity to redeem themselves next Monday with a reconsideration on the vote, I don’t have much hope they will get the 5 votes needed to overturn it.
Most people would jump at a do-over, especially after finding out as NO fault of their own they were mislead into believing it was an EMERGENCY. We all know now that was a bunch of phooey.
The main reason this redemption may not happen is that the 6 councilors who originally voted for this have all received campaign funding and endorsements from Mayor TenHaken. I can almost guarantee without his campaign assistance, PAC money and endorsements the last 4 elected would have all lost or had been close races.
Paul knows what he did, they know what he did, we all know how that cookie crumbles.
Ask Janet Brekke and Theresa Stehly what happens to you when you challenge our very own King of Scotland. The castle tower you live in becomes very cold and dark very suddenly.
UPDATE: Shelby Foote concluded that most historians are “so concerned with finding out what happened that they make the enormous mistake of equating facts with truth…you can’t get the truth from facts. The truth is the way you feel about it”
In an exclusive interview with the Argus Leader this week, Mayor Paul TenHaken said he firmly believed the bridge project was a crucial infrastructure project, but he added he’s actively listened to the complaints from the council.
“Is there some things I would like my team and myself to do differently on the communication of this?” TenHaken asked. “Absolutely.”
Sorry Paul, you have had almost 5 years to figure out how to communicate to the public and council, and if you haven’t figured it out by now, you never will.
As to the incorrect language on the meeting agenda, which an assistant city attorney has already called “unfortunate,” TenHaken agreed.
“I would chalk that up … that was an oversight,” he said. “That was a mistake, and we’ll own that.”
There are small legal language mistakes the administration has made numerous times, which probably has cost taxpayers but this ‘mistake’ is costing taxpayers $10 million dollars! Sure the bridge has to be fixed, and we have plenty of money in the reserves to do it, but it is the fiscal responsibility of city employees, the mayor’s office and the city council to get the best bang for the buck. If we saved $10 million on this project we could spend that money on other infrastructure projects. The timing is also questionable. I would think it would be way more convenient to do this project next year after the Cherapa and Sioux Steel projects are completed so the contractor doesn’t have to play whack a mole to find staging space. It could also be broken up into smaller bids. This could be negotiated better.
But he also raised concerns about how such fights could hurt the Sioux Falls, adding “when we make these smaller issues such big issues on a public stage,” it can lessen the interest of some to work with the city.
BULLSH!T!
Government’s job isn’t about making contractors and developers happy, it is about making taxpayers happy and giving them goods and services in an honest and truthful manner while being aware of the fiscal responsibility.
Throwing our hands in the air and saying ‘oh well’ doesn’t cut it, this was a failure of local government on many levels. The Mayor’s number one priority is to be the city administrator responsible for directing the different departments to do their job right. Either this was gross incompetence by all involved or this was collusion. Either would be hard to prove in an ‘exclusive’ interview with the mayor, but public ethics hearings on all those involved would go a long way. We have learned nothing from our brief history of cost overruns and hidden agendas on projects like the Denty, MAC, City Admin, Pavilion and the infamous Bunker Ramp which should have prepared us for how to handle this.
You know what they say, “Developers run this town”.
The Sioux Falls City Council plans to meet Monday February 5th. They are meeting early due to Municipal Day in Pierre on the 6th.
At least one Councilor, Sarah Cole, has expressed to the media that she may vote to reconsider at the next meeting. She is allowed to do so since she was in the affirmative when it it passed. Any councilor may 2nd the motion (which I am sure Neitzert or Starr would). The problem is ‘do they have the votes’. I don’t think they do. They would have to get Merkouris and Barranco to also vote for it to attain the 5 votes to avoid a tie-breaker. TenHaken would likely vote against the bid denial.
What makes this more interesting is how councilors were mislead and even lied to about the urgency of the project. Even if the council swallows this (I strongly urge them NOT to) they could easily file ethics complaints towards the mayor, city attorney, finance director and public works director and any employees under them that participated in this hoodwink. It would likely require a councilor(s) to file the complaint.
Let’s have a public ethics hearing and find out what happened?
All that aside and the $21 million dollar bridge that we are getting whether we like it or not (reminds you of a certain parking ramp) many engineers have reached out to me, councilors and other reporters, and when we all match up notes, we are wondering how the winning bidder was allowed to submit ONE bid for the entire project when they were required to get at least 3 bids from subcontractors (SOP)? Enquiring engineers would like to know.
For clarity NO councilor today at the 4PM special meeting used the term ‘doormat’ but they really didn’t have to. After being hoodwinked into believing they could take another stab at the bid today they realized the mayor’s office, the city attorney’s office and finance office used the wrong language last Tuesday on the agenda item which an assistant city attorney admitted to at today’s meeting after Councilor Cole questioned the language (Councilors Cole, Neitzert and Starr all voted against the $3 million supplement).
Let’s admit it, the bridge is a POS and needs to be replaced, it will also cost more then projected, I think everyone can accept that. What cannot be accepted is the way this was ramrodded through with little transparency OR respect for councilors. Four councilors touched on this;
Councilor Neitzert, clearly disgusted with the process, pointed out that he felt that the administration was disrespecting the council’s duties (he puts it much more eloquently) when it comes to how they were treated in this process and they should work as a team on this stuff;
“The city council should not tolerate an enormously expensive and important decision being dropped on us at the last minute, giving us no opportunity to do due diligence and no option to defer or delay it,” Neitzert said. “We shouldn’t tolerate being put into a corner with no options and we imposed no consequences for that behavior. In fact, we rewarded it. So don’t be surprised when it happens again.”
Councilor Cole expressed that she didn’t think it was fair to be mislead with incorrect agenda language at last week’s meeting.
Councilor Merkouris felt that the council (the legislative policy body) should put some safeguards and ordinances together over the next 30 days to prevent this from happening in the future (he looked pretty green while talking about this).
Councilor Starr reminded Merkouris that this kind of policy takeover has been going on since the new charter was put in place and that tweaks to policy ordinances hasn’t really remedied the problem that has only gotten worse since each administration has figured out how to sidestep the council. Pat basically said that the council needs to assert themselves more to become the policy body they are intended to be (it takes ACTION not talk);
“Power doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” said councilor Pat Starr, who joined Neitzert in voting no to accept the bid. “They take over our policy making process when we don’t do our job. That’s what happened in this case and it happens all the time. It will happen again because until we stand up and do our job, and not doing the work that we should, and telling the administration where we want the city to go in making that policy and until we do that they are going to continue to make policy.”
All powers of the city shall be vested in the city council, except as otherwise provided by law or this charter, and the council shall provide for the exercise thereof and for the performance of all duties and obligations imposed on the city by law. The council shall act as a part-time, policy making and legislative body, avoiding management and administrative issues.
Section 3.03 Mayor’s duties and responsibility.
The mayor shall, at the beginning of each calendar year, and may at other times give the council information as to the affairs of the city and recommend measures considered necessary and desirable. The mayor shall preside at meetings of the council, represent the city in intergovernmental relationships, appoint with the advice and consent of the council the members of the citizen advisory boards and commissions, present an annual state of the city message, and perform other duties specified by the council and by article III. The mayor shall be recognized as head of the city government for all ceremonial purposes and by the governor for purposes of military law.
I encouraged the city council during public input to vote to reconsider at the next February meeting since it was NOT of their fruition, and if the contractor wants to sue, that is on the administration and NOT on them for being mislead. It seems at least one councilor, Cole, intends to do that;
To formally reconsider an action of the council, a member on the prevailing side of the vote must make that motion during the same meeting or at the next regularly scheduled meeting of the governing body, according to city ordinance. But because Tuesday’s meeting was not a regular meeting, Sioux Falls City Attorney Stacy Kooistra said the soonest that could occur would be at the Feb. 6 meeting.
Cole told The Dakota Scout Tuesday evening she intends to do just that.
“There just wasn’t enough time ahead of the vote,” she said.
As always, when government is transparent and thorough, it saves taxpayers money. When it is chocked full of typos in the legal documents (either intentional or not) you get this turd blossom; Bunker Bridge.
l3wis 
