South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

SF City Council

County Commission David Barranco Downtown Sioux Falls Minnehaha County Property Taxes SF City Council Sioux Falls Taxes

Bikes, Bonds and Belittling

l3wis 8Comments

Not sure if you caught the above meeting, but it was a scorcher. While I would agree with Minnehaha County Commissioner Joe Kippley that Leah shouldn’t be fooling around with past elections, I don’t agree with him asking her to resign in public. He should have wrote her a letter, got a couple of his other commissioners on board and CC’d the media. It was extremely unprofessional, and the kicker is he is the health director for the city. Getting ‘political’, which was what his stunt was, is not the ethical standard I want my health director to be holding. If anything Joe should resign because of his conflicts, and I have a feeling he will AFTER the November election so they can appoint someone. More trickery. Oh, and the commission has allegedly been playing games with bond levies. More to come on that 🙁

COUNCIL KICKS THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD ON THE RIVERLINE DISTRICT

At the council meeting last night the council took the line item out of the 2025 budget and concocted a steering committee to study the purchase. While I’m happy they killed the line item, I am not happy they are continuing down the path which will ultimately have us buying the land. From talking to councilors I got the feeling they were just going to kill it and let the River Rats figure it out, but this must be the compromise. Folks, all this is, is smoke and mirrors by the council. They plan to implement a 3rd penny tax to have us paid for the Convention Center. This is short-sighted. They should implement a entertainment corporate tax on all business with 500 or more employees. If you think this place will have an economic impact on your businesses, prove it, pony up.

Oh, and Councilor Barranco was the ONLY councilor to vote against a property tax increase. Thank You David! That vote proved to me that at least 7 councilors don’t give a rat’s ass what economic position you are in, they need their play palaces!

E-BIKES HAVE INVADED DOWNTOWN

Not really, but some people seem to be butt hurt they are sitting around downtown. They are not junkers, so I am not sure what people are concerned about. Other cities do it this way. I think the only tweak I would make is having the bikes in a mobile unit so they are not scattered everywhere downtown, but like I said, there is a million other things we need to worry about downtown, and a random bike parked on a corner ain’t one of them.

WAS HARRIS DEBATING BIDEN LAST NIGHT?

After the first 10 minutes of the debate last night I thought Harris was debating Biden.

Charter Revision Commission Ethics Mayor Subprime Mike Huether Mayor TenHaken Mike Huether Munson Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Charter Revision Commission Triple Check the Charter

I couldn’t agree more with Mr. Kirby

l3wis 4Comments

Joe did a great blog post today about the charter. While I disagree with some of his premises and anecdotes he is right about ONE thing;

City government would be improved if we established a better separation of powers while at the same time, strengthening the role of our legislature. Here are some changes I think are worth considering in the charter and/or the way city government operates.

  1. Take the next mayor off the city council to establish better separation of powers.

I think this would FORCE the council to do policy because they would be running their own meetings and agendas. This doesn’t mean the mayor could not still present policy but he would have to get at least ONE sponsor on the council and if it really is HIS policy and not something a department head cooked up, he needs to come to the council and present.

I think the charter has worked well also, but the biggest problem is the laziness of the councils since and the corruption at city hall. This of course spells incompetence.

Some rules and regs really do work, but you must apply them, this city has NOT when it comes to policy and our legislative branch.

SF City Council Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls City Council Agendas are WHACKED

l3wis 2Comments

This isn’t a coincidence, it all started after the new head city clerk started, and it is getting worse. Agendas mysteriously getting posted for meetings that don’t exist, meetings moved or canceled due to improper postings, etc. Well this week they decided not only to start the meeting an hour early they are putting the executive session first.

Now, there have been meetings when the ES is at the beginning of the meeting, but it is ONLY when it is basically the only item on the agenda. So what will happen now is if you showed up at 3 PM to watch the meeting, you will be immediately kicked out of chambers for the ES which could last 5 minutes, or 50 minutes, you have no idea, so the public must sit there waiting for you to finish so the public meeting can began. Uncalled for. Public business first, then you can fart around with your secret deals.

I also don’t understand the urgency. I am assuming the council will be interviewing or actually hiring a replacement for Bixler who is retiring at the end of October. Don’t know who Bixler is? No surprise, he didn’t do much to be noticeable. He was the council’s legislative advisor and budget dude. How did that work out for yah?

Public meetings are for the PUBLIC and should be as accessible as possible. These clowns and their closed government sh!tshow is getting old. This is NOT the council’s meeting, it’s the public’s. Not sure if they will ever figure it out.

Downtown Sioux Falls Mayor TenHaken Riverline District SF City Council Sioux Falls

UPDATE: The Riverline ‘RATS’ are looking for a place to hide

l3wis 8Comments

UPDATE: I got word today from a very dependable source that the convention center is a ‘DONE DEAL’ when you talk to the business and banking community. They already have the chess pieces in place to make it happen, with or without the public’s approval. They also are lobbying the legislature right now to do a 3rd penny sales tax to pay for it, but they need their approval first. They are suggesting a ‘sunset’ clause, which never happens. Remember the Pavilion, you know the private non-profit that taxpayers fund in the millions each year even though they have over $14 million in their reserves. The entertainment tax was supposed to sunset after the bonds were paid off. I think that happened about a decade ago, still exists. Don’t be fooled by these grifters. This is a way for the bonding companies to make lots of money off of the backs of taxpayers. Most of the jobs will be hospitality, low wage, part-time with no benefits. Have you ever met a full-time bartender with the Pavilion, Denty, Orpheum, Bird Cage, etc.? NOPE. Because the jobs that will be provided by this convention center won’t make a dent in our brain drain problem. I agree there will be a massive economic impact from the new convention center, it will bankrupt our city.

The council seems to be a little butt hurt over the fact that they haven’t seen an appraisal OR a purchase agreement for the Riverline District, you know, the plot of land some douchey investors want us taxpayers to buy with cheeseburger taxes (entertainment). The problem is the council hasn’t seen a purchase agreement yet, and likely won’t until it if dropped in front of their faces at the last minute. And will the public get to see these documents?

I have concerns, but based on rumors I hear from realtors, at this point it is just pure speculation, but I have expressed privately to current and past city councilors that I have concerns about the purchase agreement due to potential conflicts of interest. It is NO secret that some who sit on that dais have spouses, business associates and other friends who pose major conflicts of interest. It will be interesting to see whose name(s) appears on that document, or will we see a lot of sharpie blackouts? This town gets more corrupt by the second.

1st Amendment Mayor TenHaken Media SF City Council Sioux Falls

The Empire Strikes back?

l3wis 4Comments

Remember the game of connect the dots? We will get to that in a moment.

It all started with a thot I had Friday night while listening to announcements from the Levitt stage.

Is Matt Paulson trying to build a local media empire to influence city hall policy even more?

It all started over a year ago when a local (seasoned) journalist told me that there are plans in the works to combine all the small local independent or semi-independent media outlets and freelancers into one organization, or at least under an umbrella of cooperation. I don’t need to list these orgs, if you read this blog, you read their sites also. This plan was later confirmed to me from another associate, but told me the plan still has some kinks in it and setbacks. I didn’t blog about this because frankly when I first heard it, I was rooting for them and said it was a great idea, let’s just see if it will work.

While many of these indies have talent, they don’t have a lot of capital, they need outside investors to make this work and they need to sell a butt load of advertising to pay everyone’s salaries.

Then walks in Matt Paulson.

But let’s play that game of ‘connect the dots’ I spoke about earlier;

• Matt Paulson has funded every campaign of all of the current 8 councilors and the mayor and many past councilors.

• Jodi Schwan leaves the Argus to start her own business website.

• Patrick Lalley, Reposa, Ellis and Sneve leave the Argus to start their own independent sites, with a small kink, Market Dweebs owner, Matt Paulson has quietly been investing in the Dakota Scout, something the council and the SOS failed to inform the public about.

• In one of the most unethical moves by city council they approve the Dakota Scout contract for legals without releasing the investors names.

• I learned Friday night at the Levitt that Paulson has hired a local popular TV anchor to work at Market Dweeb.

I’m not sure what shoe will drop next but if I were KELOLAND, DAKOTANEWS or the Argus, (nevermind, they are already a sunken ship), I would be nervous about my advertising dollars and the whole integrity of the media locally. While I like local independent journalists, I’m not sure I care for their investors, who seem to be buying up city hall candidates and now local journalists so he can control the narrative even more.

Art censoring little . . .

As a community we should be very nervous and cautious of how this potential media merger will occur, but like everything else this Dweeb touches, it will all be done in the dark of the night, because that’s how the fourth estate does things these days.

Still waiting for my offer Matt 🙂 The Scab could really use a cartoonist that used a different medium besides crayons.

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