SF City Council

Is the current Sioux Falls City Council competent?

l3wis July 14, 2025 6Comments

First, I want to say that are at least 1 or 2 councilors that do the work, but that faction changes on a daily basis and is getting smaller. Don’t get me wrong, I think peeps on the City Council are nice, and respectable business peeps in town, but they have no clue how to do policy or actually put in the time. I have blogged about city politics for over 20 years, and I have never seen a more LAZY, IGNORANT, INCOMPETENT and frankly MISINFORMED council. If it is Black they vote White, if it is White, they vote Black, they almost resist so they don’t make a bad decision. So, I get it, you think this is my opinion, not at all backed up with data;

We got an ‘F’ in workforce. I was actually surprised it wasn’t lower. Let’s face it, the rich do very well in Sux, because they are taking from the rest of us, this is enabled by a council (who have two members that never received one f’ing vote!) And maybe that is why they suck, they didn’t have to face an opponent? They didn’t do anything wrong, they signed up to run, and had no challengers, but they also have had no constituent choose them, so they tend to mend their own fence.

I guess, as I look at the policy body for the city (council) you have a lot of power to improve this, but you are not doing it, you sit on your hands, and to be honest with you, you look like a bunch of dolts when you discuss policy because everyone knows you don’t do a f’ing thing. AND, BTW, this isn’t me talking, constituents who follow this are scared, pissed and mortified by the city leadership. Tons of rich folks are mad to because they got screwed on deals. I’m sorry, but when you have a local governing body that rolls over like a dead dog every Tuesday, yah gotta question their motives.

THE CHARTER IS CLEAR! YOU ARE THE POLICY BODY, THE MAYOR IS THE ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER. YOU TELL HIM WHAT TO DO, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. SUCKERS! SUCKERS! SUCKERS!

I think 100% of the council knows we have issues, so what are they going to do about it? ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

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Did the City of Sioux Falls finance director tell a little white lie about airport bonding?

l3wis July 7, 2025 2Comments

Well, he didn’t technically lie about the matter at hand, but yah gotta scratch your head a bit. Last week while the city council was approving bonding for the airport, Shawn Pritchett, the City of Sioux Falls Finance Director was asked a simple question. For reference, the Airport Authority is an appointed board and NOT elected, so they cannot approve bonds, they must have the next governing body approve the bonds, which is the city council. The bonds, with interest, will be paid in full by the airport authority thru parking and other revenues, the taxpayers are NOT on the hook for the $30 million in bonds, unless you park at the airport So what was the question? I think Councilor Lucy Bayse asked the question, “So by approving these bonds, are citizens on the hook for the bonds or have any other financial obligation?” I’m paraphrasing, but it was pretty basic and to the point. Shawn replies, “NO.” Then goes into a detailed explanation as to why, as I explained above. So was he lying? Not at all, in fact, I see it identical to how he sees it. But, being the finance director you have to know what is coming down the pipeline? Right? Especially in a week!? So while we have NO financial obligation to the bond last week, this week, they decided to give the airport a $5 million dollar ‘LOAN’. (Item #33) Yeah, it has to be paid back, blah, blah, blah, but didn’t you just tell us last week that we had NO FINANCIAL OBLIGATION to this project (not just the bonds) then you roll out a loan? So which is it Shawn? Oh, and don’t think I don’t support the loan, I actually told a councilor that instead of the dumb bond and loan, the city should have bonded this project (50%) instead of those stupid rec centers. Expanding our airport will have more economic impact on us then a floating turd pond.

Development Planning Commission SF City Council Sioux Falls

UPDATE: Is the Planning Commission Approving an AI Data Center?

l3wis July 4, 2025 8Comments

UPDATE: If you watch the meeting from the other night you will see that a representative from the city of Brandon showed up in opposition of this item. Not sure what his role is, but I think he works in planning. He basically said the opposition comes from two directions, 1) They are not sure what kind of data center they plan to build and how large it will be, they said the company (foreign) has been very secretive about sharing any plans with the city of Brandon 2) Which was the most important part of the opposition, was that area is already zoned for FUTURE residential growth which is in Brandon’s long term growth plan and has been for years. Of course our boot licking planning commission approved the re-zone because they said this is just preliminary (they say this crap all the time) but it is NOT. It changes it now from a future growth of residential to industrial which means to change it back you would have to go thru the process all over again with a new land owner. Stupidity. Until this foreign company reveals EXACTLY what they plan to build, we should leave it AS is, Ag land with future use for residential. It was also revealed at the meeting that 300 people would be working at the site. Hogwash. These places pull this crap all the time. This is the amount of construction workers that would be on site while being built, that would most likely be shipped in from other parts of the country, but once finished it may have 20 full-time peeps who will work mostly in security and maintenance.

Unfortunately the way our planning approvals are setup, they must first ask for a re-zone of the property BEFORE they can announce what they plan to build there (Item #5A-Regular Agenda);

FLUA-021026-2025: Future Land Use Amendment to reclassify a Development Area identified in the Shape Sioux Falls 2040 Comprehensive Plan from Tier 3 to Tier 1 and amend the Future Land Use Map for the area from Residential to Future Light Industrial located east of Veterans Pkwy. and south of E. Rice St.

First off, I am NOT a fan of changing residential zoned property into light industrial especially with our housing needs in Sioux Falls. Secondly, it is pretty obvious they are changing the zoning to put in a data center but there is NO mention of a Data Center in the attached documentation on the agenda item. I wonder if the commission is smart enough to ask the question, and if the client have plans to power it? These data centers take massive amounts of electricity, how will this affect the grid in Sioux Falls? Also, the company I linked above is a registered FOREIGN LLC, and has only been registered for 6 months. I hope the commission sees thru this ruse, but if not, hopefully the city council will see this for what it is, an AI data center that will suck us dry on energy and probably drive up our energy costs. WE DO NOT WANT THIS IN SIOUX FALLS. Besides the property taxes, there is very little economic advantages of having a large data center like this in Sioux Falls. It won’t generate any sales tax revenue and it will mostly be full of servers and very few employees. We will see how this plays out, I see the planning department recommends approval (which is a way of making sure the commission rubber stamps this).

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Is Rolfing returning to council chambers next week to defend his stupid election rule?

l3wis July 2, 2025 3Comments

The rumor from city hall moles is that former councilor Tex Golfing (Rex Rolfing) will be returning to Carnegie to defend his stupid runoff rule. I wonder if he will bring his T-Bone gavel and hammer the gavel puck until it flys thru the air again? What a guy. I encourage anyone testifying to change the rule back to 34% plurality to wear an outrageous, loud, large hats, Rolfing loves hats at public input!

You know where I stand, simple plurality should be enough, and 34% is fine with me. There are some other points;

• While in a general election where no candidate in a particular race gets 50+1 normally the candidate who gets the most votes in the general gets fewer votes in the runoff because the turnout is lower. So how is getting a lower percentage of votes but a higher number of votes in the general any different then getting fewer votes in the runoff but a higher percentage? It’s an exercise in insanity, and it costs us (even though I never have liked the argument of cost savings when it comes to elections, doesn’t matter).

• Councilors Spellerberg and Sigette got ZERO votes (0%) and they are sitting on the dais. Why? Because they filled out the paperwork and followed the rules and protocol. So are they unqualified since NO ONE voted for them? Not at all. They did the work, doesn’t matter how many people voted for them.

• Also, if the runoff rule applied to the presidential election, Harris and Trump would have been in a runoff (Trump got 49.8% of the popular vote). So is Trump illegitimate (sure for other reasons) but he followed the election rules and he won, and just because he didn’t get 50+1 doesn’t persuade me he didn’t win fairly.

• It also edges out the grassroots candidates because of fund raising, or as Tim Stanga said last night during public input, “It gives us well funded deer in headlight candidates.” I think I know who he was referring to, but I won’t beat that dead horse, I mean deer.

The rule has only been used once since it was implemented 8 years ago and it was in the recent election. I disagree with Jordan Deffenbaugh’s testimony that runoffs help grassroots candidates, they do NOT. As a grassroots candidate you have to hit it hard and early, that is the secret, the longer the campaign the more you will be outspent.

They need to ditch this asinine rule it get us back to sanity with our elections.

I think only 3 councilors support changing it back, but it will take 6 votes to protect it from a mayoral veto, don’t see that happening.

UPDATE ON $100 MILLION IN PROFESSIONAL CONTRACTS WITHOUT RFP’S

My city hall moles have been telling me it is much worse then just leaving out the RFPs, one of the main reasons these contractors are being picked without RFPs because over 50% of them are out of state companies that have direct competition in Sioux Falls (in other words we have the local contractors to do the work). So why is hiring a local professional contractor better then out of state? First off, if something goes haywire, easier to sue. Secondly, local contractors hire local people and that profit is recirculated in the community. In other words when your taxdollars pay for a service, that money paid to the provider gets recirculated in the town. When you use an out of state contractor, that goes straight out the door. That’s why the Denty is a money vaccum. Another reason to use non-RFP out-of-state contractors is to cover up work the city may be doing that they don’t want the constituents to know about. When you put out an RFP for a repair job, people start asking questions, you know like damaged roofs on city owned buildings. The audit committee needs to do a full audit of all out-of-state, non-RFP, professional contracts that have been granted over the past 7 years.

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Mayor TenHaken has approved $100 million in professional contracts w/o an RFP (request for proposal)

l3wis June 25, 2025 5Comments

So amazing when you hear a councilor spout off about something NO ONE in the public was aware of. So Curtis the Blurtist decided to go off about how the council was left out of negotiations on the ambulance service, and to be quite honest, this is a bad path, and I 100% agree with him. We need to implement a municipal ambulance service. We are already doing it (SFFD) and we are getting F’ing zero ROI of assisted calls. This isn’t rocket science. You equip all the fire stations with ambulances and EMT’s. You give them union benefits and pay, and you hire a 3rd party insurance collector for revenue. It baffles me we have a contract with a company that literally relies on taxpayer funded EMT services to assist them and we get ZERO in return. Even councilor Soehl brought up that we should explore this, because the current setup with the fire department is f’d (because they are the first responders to calls, and basically hand off the patient to a taxi service. Oh, and I have witnessed it. Rode past emergency situations and the only EMT’s on scene are SFFD. And they literally prepare the patient for transfer and the ambulance shows up, and the SFFD puts the patient in the ambulance. It is a f’ing joke.)

But back to the RFP’s. Tonight while Soehl was ranting about RFP’s and other contracts he said this;

“Mayor TenHaken has approved $100 Million in NON RFP contracts since he has been mayor.”

WOW! And you waited seven years to tell us this!!!!!!???

First, some clarity. RFP’s are proposals sent out to potential professional contractors, they submit their bids and low (but qualified) usually wins. But in a weird rule in the charter (Munson was guilty of this a lot) the mayor can override any RFP and pick the contractor of their choice. I’m ok with this rule, BUT, you must first put out a bid for qualified contractors.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about city government is NOT corrupt. But when our mayor hands out millions to his buddies without constituent knowledge, there is only one word for it; CORRUPTION! and maybe a couple more like integrity and ethics?

Poops, I have always known you were corrupt, but this puts the nail in the coffin. WOW!

And Curt, thanks for the Rex Rolfing dented siding moment. And if you knew the mayor was this corrupt, what did you do about it? Chirp. Chirp.

Also, there was a city council joint meeting with the Laughing Waters County Commission. Doesn’t matter what happened, but this hot mic from a commissioner made me laugh after the commission approved the denial and awaiting the council to do the same. Well apparently the discussion irked a county commissioner as you could here her say into a hot mic, “If the council votes against this I am going to lose it.” (or something like that, it was fuzzy, but understandable.)

And folks, these are the Clems ruling us. They make Trump look like Ghandi.

Speaking of poor folks getting screwed, my favorite Steve Earle Song (it’s my life story);

Is the current Sioux Falls City Council competent?

Did the City of Sioux Falls finance director tell a little white lie about airport bonding?

UPDATE: Is the Planning Commission Approving an AI Data Center?

Is Rolfing returning to council chambers next week to defend his stupid election rule?

Mayor TenHaken has approved $100 million in professional contracts w/o an RFP (request for proposal)

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Is the current Sioux Falls City Council competent?

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