SF City Council

Update II: The Sioux Falls City Council meeting tonight was truly disgusting. I felt like throwing up afterwards.

l3wis June 17, 2025 14Comments

UPDATE II: I decided to see if the 50% rule has even been used since it was implemented in 2017. It has ONLY applied ONE time, and that was in 2024 and the runoff between Thomason and Deffenbaugh, and the runoff results were the same as the general election with Thomason the victor. There have been 4 elections since the rule was implemented and has only been triggered one time! Simply not needed. In 2018, there was a runoff between DeBoer and Soehl, but the runoff would have occurred even with the old rule of 34% in place because neither Zach or Curt got over 27% of the vote (there was 5 candidates in the initial race). It seems silly to defend a rule that has never been applied, was implemented because of political revenge, keeps grassroots candidates on the sidelines, costs us extra in elections and has NO political or constituent advantages to stand on. The councilors that VOTE against changing it back really need to get their heads examined. This is an easy one. Something wasn’t broken, change it back.

UPDATE: When this was introduced a few years ago by councilor Starr, councilor Merkouris told fellow councilors keeping the 50% rule would keep out the ‘fringe candidates’. In other words grassroots candidates with little money would’nt be able to take on the money machine. This is why Spellerberg and Sigette had no challengers. Peeps are tired of the money game. I also find this rule ironic, since if applied to the last presidential election there would have had to been a runoff between Harris and Trump (he received 49.8% of the popular vote.)

——————

I will say, I have been following council since Hansen was in office. I have seen some pretty weird meetings, but tonight, was sickening.

First, the public input. I think that most of them need a brain scan to see if they have dementia, secondly, they were saying crap that was counter culture to what really happens. Here is a fine example, so there is this guy that shows up to the council meetings that thinks he is philosopher, but he is mostly just a blabber, and he says to the ordinance about changing the plurality to council races BACK TO 35% that it seemed ‘politically motivated’. Hey, it got changed because of POLITICAL MOTIVES and that is why we need to change it back, so good catch, even if you don’t know what you are talking about. The change came in 2017 when the council was split and Mayor Huether broke the tie to pass this very idiotic change.

Let’s move onto the city council, they also took the side of ‘political motivation’ as to why not to change it back. Let me inform you. Councilor Rex Rolfing was vindictive, he was mean, and didn’t make any policy changes unless he was punishing his political enemies, and the move by him was purely political because of his disdain for councilor Stehly. The main reason why this should be eliminated was it wasn’t needed to begin with. If 7 people are running for a council seat and the leading candidate gets 35% of the vote, that’s good enough for me (the remaining 6 candidates would get an average of 11% of the vote, which is a THIRD of what the winner would receive.) It seems the council likes to enrich the pockets of local campaign electioneers, so the longer they can draw this out the better. The problem; You are so misinformed it is almost criminal.

It is shocking to me that the majority of the council has NO CLUE about good governance. Just protecting their behinds. In a democratic republic you are elected to represent us, not to preserve some rule that was concocted to punish political foes. Do your research BEFORE the second reading, and you will see that changing a rule that was in place for 20 years back to it’s an original intent is the best way to resolve this, and put the Rex Rolfing rule to rest once and for all.

Update: Why our very ‘Special’ city council is ignoring a special election

l3wis May 28, 2025 4Comments

UPDATE: I didn’t think about this until this afternoon but also if there’s anybody sitting on the current council that is running for reelection as an incumbent or if any councilor decides to run for Mayor that’s a huge conflict to be picking your own election date for a campaign you’re running in. Why? Because by picking a June date that means fewer months of campaigning and having to raise less money.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, we know the scenario. The State DoDo birds we call our legislature decided to change state law so they could control local elections. Tsk! Tsk! Stay the F’ck out of our elections and start working on your AA and diet plans. Either way, we now have a decision to make, but for some reason our brilliant city council thinks they need to make the decision, but that is NOT how the law is written. It is up to the citizens of this community to decide that date (June or November) not them. So at the informational today (I encourage to watch before forming a opinion) they pitched this legal concept that indeed the citizens do get to choose the election date, BUT NOT for this first election, that was up to them. Bullwash! What needs to happen is a special election in September determining the date of the election, and while they are at it, also put a charter amendment that eliminates the ‘Rex Rolfing/Stehly Rule’ that there has to be a runoff in city council races if no one gets more then 34% or some whacka-doodle thing like that. Make it a plurality so there is no runoff. Barranco suggested this. I think it would be incredibly confusing to voters showing up to vote for council and mayoral candidates and having to choose an election date, they would most likely pick the day they were currently voting, which is a setup because the council is initially leaning towards a June election. One of the arguments they make that they HAVE TO decide the first election date is because candidates and campaigns need to know ASAP. Silliness. Anyone considering running has already kind of made up their minds, they also know that the earliest their would be an election is June and the latest November. The date of the election is of no consequence to the candidate if that decision isn’t made until September. They would only have to adjust their campaign budgets if November was picked. That’s IT! They would also have more time to campaign, which is a good thing locally. I think the city council is on shaky legal ground. I think they know they have to call a special election and let the citizens decide, but instead they continue to eat the Fiddle-Faddle. I would get really weary of chomping on the old maids . . . wait . . . or maybe not 🙂

Girl Power at Carnegie?

l3wis May 23, 2025 1Comments

Oh, the political games played on such an unsubstantial level. The other night the city council elected their chairs. Usually I chide a few councilors into nominating someone (they never pick the person 🙂 but this time I stayed out of it, I guess I wanted to be surprised. Councilor Merkouris was promoted to Chair, which was no surprise, and Barranco kept his Auditor Chair title. Sigette was nominated as Vice-Chair. While I was a little surprised, I was also NOT. She has shown she wants to dig in, so that’s good. But she seemed surprised to accept the nomination. I asked a councilor afterwards, did she know in advance? They said, YES. This is SOP with the city council. They usually play games behind the scenes trying to get the person nailed down on voting night so they are not surprised or embarrassed. So how do I think this played out? I’m not sure, so I am going to take an educated guess; When Rich and Curt set out to find their candidate I am sure they reached out to all the councilors asking who would be interested. My guess is Thomason probably said he would like to do it, because I know he has mentioned it to me in the past. Then in comes the COS Beck and the Mayor’s office encouraging a female councilor. My guess is that all three of them turned it down. Miranda probably turned it down because of work commitments, Cole is not running for a 2nd term, and Sigette may have considered but also worried she wasn’t experienced enough. So what happened between the time Thomason probably told leadership he was interested and the moment Sigette was convinced to take the job? Not sure, but now the Mayor’s office is apparently playing games with the council’s leadership picks. tsk. tsk. But that’s just WILD SPECULATION on my part 🙂