SF City Council

Bunker Ramp Downtown Sioux Falls Mayor TenHaken SF City Council Sioux Falls Taxes

Do ALL Downtown SF Businesses support Saturday metering?

l3wis April 21, 2025 1Comments

The short answer is NO, and probably why they skirted this move administratively instead of bringing it in front of the council where DTSF businesses could air their grievances in the public square. I supported this based on 1) That DTSF (the org) reassured the council that DT businesses support this* 2) it will ONLY be on Phillips and you can still park for free in the ramps (which I think will gradually be used more due to the Saturday metering on Phillips).

*At first glance I am hearing that only about half of DTSF businesses support this, the rest are ‘wait and see’. This of course is from random conversations I had with DTSF business owners, workers in DTSF and some city staff. Nothing scientific.

I have no idea what kind of support it has.

Which brings us to the crux of the issue. Besides being the council’s duty to vote on new taxes and fees, and a First and Second reading would have allowed people who own businesses DTSF and work DTSF to share their opinions. Maybe most of them support it? I don’t know, and we never will because the process was not followed and the council, once again, allowed a precedent by the mayor’s office. Tsk! Tsk! I sometimes wonder if Trump is our shadow mayor.

Bunker Ramp Downtown Sioux Falls SF City Council Sioux Falls

Update: Did the Sioux Falls City Council approve Saturday metering in DTSF? Nope.

l3wis April 10, 2025 6Comments

Update: I talked to some attorneys about this and they all disagreed with me on the tax issue. One attorney said it was a ‘government services fee’ basically you are leasing the space from the city so it is a fee. But they all agreed with me that the council really should have approved it in a 1st and 2nd reading so there would have been a public hearing before its implementation.

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When I saw the story yesterday that they were going to start metering on Saturdays I wondered when the city council approved this. Well, they didn’t because they did not have to. According to charter, ordinances 77.080-77.082 gives the parking director and strangely the city engineer the authority to determine when they can charge these fees. A few months ago when they banned monster trucks in DTSF the council did discuss Saturday metering but never gave a timeline or even voted on it, so I was expecting a vote this Spring. But I would argue that it DOES NOT give the director the authority to make this move;

The director of public parking facilities shall establish the hours during the day and night when parking meters or gates must be used and when the time limitations shall be effective,

Notice it says the director can determine the TIMES during a specific day, but it DOES NOT give him the authority to pick the days of collection, which he did here, SATURDAY.

I would encourage an attorney with some free time to go DTSF and park at a meter on a Saturday, receive a ticket then challenge that ticket in court by saying the director didn’t have the authority to pick a NEW day to start metering.

There is also the labor involved. Obviously they had to hire some new people to watch the meters. Was this in the budget? Did the councilors approve that? I doubt it.

This is a MAGA move by our Mayor. You don’t have the authority to start TAXING constituents on a new day without the approval of the policy body which makes taxation decisions, because as Staggers once said, you can call it a ‘parking fee’ but let’s call it what it really is; a ‘tax’.

The parking division also has a revenue issue putting most of their yearly earnings into bond payments for that color fart bunker ramp. The parking division needs more money, and they are coming for yah. I have contended that the city make ALL parking DTSF FREE, 24/7 except meters on Phillips, I would have them running non-stop, 7 days a week, and I would charge $5.00 an hour. If you want people coming DTSF to shop, may I suggest more FREE parking in ramps.

1st Amendment Curt Soehl Downtown Sioux Falls Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls City Council Chair doesn’t like being yelled at

l3wis April 9, 2025 4Comments

Curtist the Blurtist had a plan last night. He pulled an item from the consent agenda. The city was allocating $150K for two new ambassadors for DTSF. While I think it is awesome DTSF is creating jobs, I doubt the employees are making $75K each for the summer, but as DTSF says they need money for ‘training’. LOL. Why did Curt pull the item? Because he thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about the great thing these ambassadors are doing. Well, he was wrong. While our country is going into a tailspin because of a very stupid person, constituents are NOT happy, and they certainly won’t be happy about the city spending more money on the transient issue by spending more money NOT ON THEM!

So some constituents weighed in, and it wasn’t pretty. While they were certainly not friendly in their testimonies, they weren’t wrong. After the trip to the woodshed, Curt was unhappy so he said something like, “I didn’t know we were going to get yelled at . . .” First off, Curt, that is really your main job, listening to constituent complaints, and secondly if you want to POP off at constituents during a meeting you are VIOLATING a rule MMM put in place, NO CONSTITUENT INTERACTION WHILE THEY ARE AT THE PODIUM. So Curt, if you want to change the rules, which I am ALL for, to allow councilors to interact with constituents during public input, DO IT! But until that rule change is made I suggest you such your pie hole and take it like a big kid, or better yet RESIGN. Your disdain for public engagement is getting old, like you (as you pointed out in the meeting.)

Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council Sioux Falls

City of Sioux Falls still can’t get agenda page to work correctly

l3wis April 4, 2025 2Comments

SIRE, the system that the city council has used for years for their agendas and videos is broke, again. This system has been acting up since the days of MMM. How can a system be permanently broke for over a decade?! Well it came to a boiling point last week when the audit committee meeting had to continue to recess because the streaming system didn’t work. The meeting is posted now but you will see all the problems with it. Some would say this is just a hard problem to solve, but with hundreds of hours of staffers trying to fix it and millions in service fees you would think it would be fixed by now. Nope. This isn’t incompetence it is being done on purpose to make the government less transparent.

If you look at the ‘recent’ tab on the agenda page you will see now they list the oldest meeting first so you have to scroll all the way to the bottom to find the newest meeting. WHY!? They changed this recently.

I have said for a long time almost all the local government entities around us and in the state live stream their meetings on YouTube so you can pause them or watch them again right after they finish. It is also a FREE service, and since the city live streamed other events like pressers, their is absolutely no reason they could not use it for council meetings. If someone wants to see the agenda they can go to the city website you can also LINK that page under the YT live stream video.

Like I said, this all started with Mike the Maniac and his control over the media and staff ‘leaks’. But he has been gone for 7 years! FIX IT ALREADY!

1st Amendment Bishop Dudley House Downtown Sioux Falls Homeless Mayor TenHaken Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council

The City of Sioux Falls doesn’t understand transparency and open government

l3wis March 31, 2025 7Comments

Here we go again, concocting some ‘solution’ for an issue in the city and not bringing the public along in that ‘solution’;

City officials say more information on a $150,000 marketing campaign aimed at addressing “nuisance behavior” and discouraging panhandling in downtown Sioux Falls is coming soon.

There have been several ‘rumored’ ordinances that are awaiting the council’s approval including making it illegal (trespassing/camping) in our parks. But why not have a public discussion where the citizens can offer solutions?

Asked for an update this week, TenHaken’s communications officer Vanessa Gomez said, “I would expect us to be able to share more in the next month or so.”

So what’s the big secret? If you are instituting new laws shouldn’t you tell the public in advance? My guess is that they are going to be very controversial and I wouldn’t doubt the ACLU gets involved. Just like the Brockhouse animals you are going to drop this in our laps at the last minute.

I told a city official last week that every country and community that has either solved homelessness or made virtually invisible did it one way; Transitional housing. I suggested the city buy four Tzadik properties on bank foreclosure, remodel them to be 1 bedroom and studios and gift them to the St. Francis house and offer them a yearly subsidy for handling the transitional housing. We seem to be throwing money at ad agencies to educate the public, but we are doing very little to actually help these folks. For $150K you could house 25 people for a year!

I suggest that moving forward, the council tells us what they are planning, and NOT next month, TODAY!

Do ALL Downtown SF Businesses support Saturday metering?

Update: Did the Sioux Falls City Council approve Saturday metering in DTSF? Nope.

Sioux Falls City Council Chair doesn’t like being yelled at

City of Sioux Falls still can’t get agenda page to work correctly

The City of Sioux Falls doesn’t understand transparency and open government

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