Entries Tagged 'SF City Council' ↓

On the Sioux Falls city council agenda Tuesday night you will see a little tidbit in item #7, approval of contracts, sub-item #4;

Don’t be fooled by the title, this interest free loan is a pass through from the Feds for affordable housing to Lloyd Companies. I wonder if someone will ask exactly what the rents will be for this supposed affordable housing. Once again, developer welfare for a developer that doesn’t need it.

Just imagine if we gave interest free loans to people in the core of our city to help clean up their property? How far would this money go? Maybe we could clean up 50-100 properties with sidewalk repair, roof and siding repair, windows, landscaping? Let’s go even a step farther and give mini-TIFs to property owners in these affected neighborhoods in the form of property tax relief.

I truly believe the death of Tracy Saboe could have been avoided if we would have started cleaning up these neighborhoods over 12 years ago when first proposed by Mayor Munson. NOTHING has been done. So now crime increases while wealthy developers continue to cash in on projects that do nothing to prevent crime. But hey we have a $115 million dollar dented up events center (that sits empty while we pay a $10 million dollar a year mortgage on it). A $26 million dollar bunker ramp (that has yet to open) and a $20+ million dollar TIF to a project that is in flux while we go ahead with a $11 million dollar bond to build a greenway project around it (even with speculation if the project will ever happen). Why do we keep blowing the money on welfare for wealthy developers instead of helping hardworking Sioux Falls residents to clean up their properties and ultimately their neighborhoods? Because of the greedy fools we continue to elect.

So instead of using the money to clean up these existing neighborhoods we are using it to tear down a nature area and create more density where it is NOT needed.

You are going to see a lot of this over the next two years especially with a banker on the council and only two councilors left to ask the tough questions and a mayor who is more concerned about cashing in on his 5G investments(?) (That’s the rumor going around that our local media refuses to look into because the mayor has a tight grip you know where).

The newest member of the RS6 spent more than any council candidate in the history of the city. In fact, it is 5 years worth of salary for a city councilor. Also remember, we have not seen the final financial report, that will be at year end. It will be interesting to see what the final amount is. Astounding for a seat that pays around $19K a year and has little power. So far he approximately spent $8 per vote.

The bigger question is will Alex recuse himself on votes for the city’s bank, which he works for. And what kind of rezones will he vote on that his employer is financing? This wasn’t just about getting rid of a pesky city councilor, this was about the players in town having their own councilor on the dais.

He was bought and paid for. I hope it was worth it. Likely not.

Funny how the treasurer who told me all along he wasn’t Alex’s campaign manager knows so much about the strategy that was used. Matt was Alex’s campaign manager and everyone knew it. It was one of the lousiest lies I have ever heard in a campaign. But telling the truth doesn’t win elections.

While I will agree with some of his points, let’s simply this;

• Raised a buttload of money (from the banksters and develpers) and spent around 10X more than his opponent.

• Campaigned 3X longer than his opponent.

• Used the extra time from a delayed election to campaign more to primary voters that don’t normally vote in city elections.

• Used the list of Mayor TenHaken’s supporters from 2018 to turn the tide in the SE districts. I figured they were going to do this early on. I got tipped off by a mole that was the list they were working from months ago.

There was no grand mystery here, it was really simple math that made Jensen the 6th member of the RS5. MONEY! And lots of it.

There has been a story circulating in our local rag that Stehly lost the race because her supporters did not show up and she was mean to Neitzert.

Hogwash!

First off, Stehly and Jensen both probably got more votes than any city councilor in the history of our city. Just because Theresa lost by 97 votes doesn’t mean her support wasn’t there.

As for Neitzert, she did the right thing by fighting him on all of his misguided votes on the administration building, the internal auditor and the Bunker Ramp and many more issues. If anything, her battles with him helped her.

I have said if the election was held on April 14th it would have been a landslide for her. Why? Because the normal percentage of voters who pay attention to city politics would have shown up and cast the appropriate informed vote. Covid threw a wrench in it. Not to mention the lackluster training of the poll workers, something virtually not brought up in the hit piece and the enormous amount of money from the banksters and developers spent on her opposing candidate.

This did not clearly happen. A bunch of uninformed, partisan, primary voters showed up to elect a ‘real’ establishment Republican to the city council, not having a clue that this was a non-partisan race. They may have been confused why there wasn’t an R or D behind their names. It was a perfect storm to get the partisan hack clems to show up to vote that think city government is about party politics. It is not, but this current administration and his lackeys have turned it into us against them.

Local government is about all of us. Republican, Democratic, Independent, minority, gay, straight, religious or non-religious and those of us who just don’t give a damn. Theresa lost because 98 more ignorant fools voted for the other guy. The math is really that simple.

UPDATE: Guest Post from Theresa Stehly;

I want to thank the members of the recount board: Jon Hansen-Del Rapids, Rodney Steele-Brookings and my attorney Randy Seiler-Fort Pierre. These men crossed party lines on June 24th and worked collaboratively to examine approximately 29,000 ballots. They all made transparency and citizen accountability the top priority of the day. I feel confident that every allowable vote was counted.

I also want to thank City Council Clerk Tom Grecko , County Auditor Bob Litz , City Attorney Stacy Koistra and all election support staff for running an efficient recount day. In the end, I lost by 97 votes.

As I leave this council position, I want the citizens to know that I served them with a loving heart.  I always tried protect their best interests and  to help them whenever I could.

I wish Alex Jensen the best.  I pray that he will serve the people with the responsiveness and caring respect they deserve.

God bless you all,

Theresa Stehly

As I have said before, I didn’t want my friend Theresa running for re-election. It was taking a toll on her that I didn’t like. It changed her in ways that were positive, but in more ways made her more bitter, angry and suspicious of government.

She worked hard. I probably spent more hours on the phone talking to her about policy then she did in meetings. It was a wrestling match that I did not enjoy, because solving those problems are hard. Very Hard!

She HATED secrecy and corruption, and it showed everytime she turned on her microphone at public meetings.

We will never see another Theresa Stehly in city government again. I don’t say this lightly. It makes me very sad and discouraged. We have allowed a bunch of toddlers take over the city, and soon we will be paying the price. You will see.

But don’t think Theresa is going to ride off in the sunset. It’s not her nature. When a door closes on her, another one opens. I think we will see that.

I want to congratulate Jensen, he won fair and square (besides the money).

Kids, it’s always about ‘The money’. If you don’t have it, you don’t win.

I guess I can’t call Jensen a Count anymore, he is now known as RE-Count Jensen, LOL!

After an incident over the weekend where SFPOs were caught cussing out suspects, the Chief of Police claims there is nothing to see, move along. As I have been saying for years, further proof we need body cams, but as he said last week, no policy changes. Shocker. They also need some diversity training and paid physical fitness time.

Sales taxes are in the crapper, but no surprise. As about 15% of the workforce in Sioux Falls lost their jobs and nobody was spending any money – we saw this coming. I just hope the budget hearings that start tomorrow prepare for this.

Speaking of money, the city could get up to $41 million in Covid money but Mayor Multi-task doesn’t think we need it. The covid crisis is far from over, and as you noticed, the cases in SD remain on an even keel and are NOT going down. If this continues into the fall and winter, we may need some of that money to combat the crisis further. Nothing wrong with planning ahead, wait, this administration doesn’t know what that means. Let’s just keep the libraries and pools closed, that’s the ticket!The Public Transit board met today but no one really knows what is on the agenda because it wasn’t posted on the agenda page. Of course this is a violation of open meetings laws not having the agenda posted (except in this mysterious zoom document). But they have been violating those rules for a couple of years now, why do anything differently?

So isn’t it interesting that the re-count manual was changed on June 3rd? The good news is that the manual that existed on the day of the election is what stands, not the changed one. I have not reviewed either manual, so I do not know the changes, but by law, the one that existed on June 2nd is that one that applies to the city election and recount. Curious what changes were made and the curious timing of those changes.

This is a wonderful podcast of Tara talking about her friend Theresa and the recount.