Sioux Falls City Councilors Karsky & Kiley approve of inefficiency and poor customer service in city government

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During the December edition of ‘Inside Town Hall’ four city councilors had a discussion about Project TRIM (Or as we call it Project Tree Tax). Councilor Staggers of course believes like many cities throughout the Midwest (Brandon, Brookings & Kansas City for example) that the city of Sioux Falls should trim the trees in the boulevard. As a Brandon city councilor brought up in a joint meeting with SF city councilors, “It’s just more efficient and accurate.” then policing homeowners to do it. Councilor Erickson believes the way the city goes about policing the policy is cumbersome and could use improvement.

But councilors Karsky and Kiley think it works just fine (mailing out vague letters about the trees that need to be trimmed, sending out city employees to tag those properties but not identify the actual branches). Kiley goes on to say that it would cost to much for the city to trim the trees. That statement in itself is ridiculous. As the Brandon city councilor pointed out, they discovered it was cheaper to contract out a licensed arborist to just go out and trim those trees then to go through the ridiculous process of paying city employees to drive around and tag properties then send out letters when the time could be better spent at just trimming the violating trees to begin with. Then there is the matter of the adjoining property owners not owning those trees anyway because they sit on city property.

No surprise to me that Kiley and Karsky would find the process A’ OK as is.

The final financial reports are in from the city election

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No big surprises. It looks like Walmart threw in only an additional $33,000 in the last week before the election. Some interesting notes to point out in the candidate races were that Kiley received only ONE individual contributions right before the election, $250 from Cindy Huether. Cindy  also gave $250 to Tex Golfing & Michelle Erpenbach. How convenient that she gave this late in the game, knowing her name wouldn’t appear on a financial report until after the election. I guess she learned well from her sneaky husband.

Mayor Huether also had some interesting contributors. From PAC’s he got $1500 from two separate Unions, Citigroup gave $500, John Morrell’s (Smithfield) gave $1000, and one of the more interesting of his PAC contributors was HDR Engineering, which gave $500. HDR does a boatload of consulting for the city planning office. A very strange donation to Christine Erickson was from Kyle Schoenfish (used to be a Democrat, and is the son of Mayor Huether’s first cousin) who gave $125. Still trying to figure that one out.

What does SF Council Candidate Kiley exactly ‘do’ for the safety council?

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Rick Kiley

‘Helmets are for wussies!’

While the Argus Leader allowed council candidate Kiley to tout his government experience today;

Kiley, 60, is retired from teaching high school biology and now works as director of the South Dakota Safety Council’s motorcycle rider education program.

He’s served on a number of community boards, including the city’s Falls Community Health board, the Sioux Falls Metropolitan Planning Organization and the Interstate 229 corridor study. He’s also vice chairman of the National Association of Motorcycle Safety Administrators and served on the governor’s task force on impaired driving and roadway safety.

One has to wonder how successful he has been in those roles and may explain why he isn’t very good at answering questions saying he likes to base his decisions on ‘facts’. Sitting on several safety boards, he must know where the state sits on safety standards;

Worst States

The red rating indicates that the following states are dangerously behind in the adoption of Advocates’ optimal laws. States receive a red rating if they have fewer than 7 laws, without both primary enforcement front and rear seat belt laws.

(1) SOUTH DAKOTA Only 2 laws. Missing front and rear primary enforcement seat belt law, all-rider motorcycle helmet law, booster seat law, 6 of the 7 teen driving provisions, an ignition interlock law, a child endangerment law and an all-driver text messaging restriction.

It would seem to me, that while Mr. Kiley would like to tout all his government experience on safety councils and boards, he should probably hope that no one looks at the state’s record on traffic safety, because those ‘facts’ reveal that Mr. Kiley hasn’t been doing much except keeping a seat warm, because he surely isn’t helping us to be much safer.