SF City Council

1st Amendment Mayor TenHaken SF City Council Sioux Falls

City of Sioux Falls continues to spend Hundreds of Thousands of dollars with out-of-state marketing firms

l3wis December 15, 2025 3Comments

As I have stated in the past, the city doesn’t need to spend any money on marketing our city. We have given the Development and Community Foundation and CVB millions over the years to do just that; MARKET SIOUX FALLS. These organizations exist solely for that purpose, so why would the city have a separate contract;

And just look at the vendor, this is what they specialize in;

Make it easy for your customers to shop directly from their feeds. Sprout’s social commerce solution integrates social media into your sales funnel to offer faster customer service and sell instantly.

They specialize in social media marketing for major retailers. When will our city leaders figure our that city government isn’t a business? And if I have one more rich POS in Sioux Falls tell me government needs to run like a business and we need a CEO as a mayor, I am going to just remain silent and walk away.

1st Amendment SF City Council Sioux Falls

We are getting a Weapons Manufacturer in Sioux Falls. Woohoo!

l3wis December 15, 2025 3Comments

I am not celebrating. When I hear about West Virginia or Georgia getting defense contracts, I say, good for you, you can have them.

I agree we need more manufacturing in Sioux Falls and across the country, but we should be building things that actually improve lives instead of destroying them.

There is also the economic factor. Since these folks are making weapons for the Pentagon the final product won’t even be available for sale on the open market so we will get NO tax revenue from the facility. Besides maybe 100 local jobs, most of the profits will ship directly out of state and never recycle in our community. Plus, once the contract is fullfilled in two years, will the government order more or will they just pack up and leave while laying off those workers?

We are ALSO paying for all of this with our Federal Tax Dollars so the facility is actually COSTING us. This isn’t free market capitalism manufacturing. This is your tax dollars buying WMD’s that kill foreigners, and little else.

I would have loved to been a fly on the wall when city council was told about this privately and their reaction. I’m guessing not all of them were happy about it. I also think GOED and Rhoden pushed this onto us like the prison and local leadership didn’t have much of a choice in the matter or the courage to stop him. Last I checked with Home Rule Charter we decide on our local zoning, so the council could stop this, but they won’t.

Elections SF City Council Sioux Falls Vernon Brown

Sioux Falls City Council violated so many rules tonight it was ALMOST comical, but I am NOT laughing

l3wis December 9, 2025 3Comments

The city council appointed Vernon Brown tonight since we was the ONLY(?) nominee for Cole’s empty seat. I don’t take issue with Vernon’s appointment. While I disagreed with him on most everything on the council, he is NO dummy and he will be an asset to the council over the next 6 months. I would love to be a fly on the wall when Vernon expresses his discomfort with council leadership on how haphazardly the council and city government is being run now, and I hope Vernon acts more like a Private Investigator then a councilor over the next 6 months and reports back to the public, but I am NOT going to hold my breath. (for full disclosure I went to HS with Vernon’s wife and have known her family since I was a tike, her parents are the salt of the earth).

Nomination aside, Vernon approached this the way several other potential candidates did; professionally, so what I am going to say about council action tonight has NOTHING to do with Vernon’s character or ability to serve. He did everything right, and there are NO faults with him.

So where did the council f’ck up? Man, where to begin?

• They didn’t provide a singular contact to apply for nomination just that you had to kiss two councilor’s asses. In a functioning open government you have a direct source to apply for these nominations. This made it a CLOSED process and a 1st Amendment violation. The council didn’t even provide a direct contact to THEM! It is HYPOCRITICAL to complain about citizen participation in local government then when an opportunity presents itself you tell the public to GFThemselves. WOW!

• They only nominated ONE person. While Soehl expressed that several candidates applied (I know of at least 6 but he touched on clergy and business folks which were NOT on my radar). All the applicants should have been listed. Even Miranda ‘Lucy’ Basye thot there would be more nominees though I think her little statement was smoke and mirrors while we watch Charlie Brown lay on his back in pain.

• But where they really screwed the pooch happened several weeks ago when Council Chair Rich Merkouris said in a live presser that he wouldn’t nominate anyone who was running for office in next year’s city election. This is a CLEAR violation of charter. There are ONLY TWO requirements to be on city council; You must be 18 years of age and a resident of Sioux Falls for the past 6 months. There are NO other requirements!!!!!! He is violating charter and the 1st Amendment!

I knew this process was Sh!t from the beginning, and I feel sorry for the appointee who got appointed on a false premise. But this is how we do govmint’ in Sux.

1st Amendment Downtown Sioux Falls Homeless SF City Council Sioux Falls

UPDATE: Sioux Falls Citizen Survey results down in almost every category since 2021

l3wis December 9, 2025 1Comments

And some of it isn’t good, some categories dropping almost 10+ points in 2 years. They will do a presentation today at 4 PM, and here is a link to the document.

UPDATE: Here is the entire survey. You will see that they did not include any citizen comments on the survey, they have in the past. This tells me, there probably wasn’t too many positive comments. They also went the BIGOTRY route by filtering out Hispanics on the race question. Not sure why they did that because we have several immigrant communities in Sioux Falls. Weird.

I will do a deeper dive tonight after the presentation but there were a few stats I wanted to point out.

It seems the council is hestitant to fund childcare services or transient management but the citizens seem to be ok with it;

• 80% support funding for transient issues and housing

• 70% support funding for childcare

• 70% support funding for airport

Where the survey takes a bad turn is government services and transparency, many failing grades, but this one surprised me;

I’m sure there will be more details at the meeting today, but it will be interesting to see how the council addresses the transparency issues. I was surprised by these stats because I have been telling folks for 20 years the lack of transparency in city government and how bad it has gotten over the past 12 years but just figured no one notices because when you don’t inform people they tend to not be involved or care. If only 50% trust the government in Sioux Falls, yah got problems.

1st Amendment Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council Sioux Falls

The City of Sioux Falls does as little as possible when it comes to open meetings

l3wis December 8, 2025 3Comments

Sure they follow state law, a law that was hijacked. When our current open meeting laws were implemented they were originally written by a Democrat, Nancy Turbak. But instead of the SD GOP opposing her bill, Dave Knudson convinced them to work with her on the legislation, instead, Dave gutted it leaving it up to local governments to decide what is open and what is not, kind of like the fox watching the hen house. Just look at how our city attorney ‘interprets’ our open meeting laws in this presentation to council;

• If a quasi-judicial item, then the applicant is allowed a rebuttal following public input. (while I think it is fine for an applicant to have a rebuttal, that equal time should be afforded to the opposition. Not in Sux, business owner first, citizens dead last.)

• General Public input must be included on the agenda and is limited to topics which did not involve those agenda items appearing earlier. (As I have said in the past, the council can’t limit what you can say during general public input, it is a violation of your 1st Amendment rights).

• Can the public body discuss the issue(s) first raised by a General Public Input Presenter at the same meeting?
No.

Then it may become an agenda item which was not properly noticed. (this excuse made me chuckle. If a constituent asked the age of a city councilor while standing at the podium and that councilor answered, that is NOT a whole new item. What a ridiculous excuse. Constituents used to be able to question council at meetings but Mike had that rule changed. This has NOTHING to do with open meeting laws. The council knows they can answer a question they are just to scared of the city attorney.)

• Are email discussions an “official meeting”? Official meetings can be conducted electronically. “A quorum of a public body who discusses official business of that body via electronic means is conducting an official meeting.” (this would explain why Fiddle says we have 500 meetings a year, he thinks sending an email to the mayor is a ‘meeting’.)

If you review our current State Open Meeting laws you will see they grant massive power to local governments to self-determine what can and cannot be transparent, in other words LEGALIZED CENSORSHIP.

City of Sioux Falls continues to spend Hundreds of Thousands of dollars with out-of-state marketing firms

We are getting a Weapons Manufacturer in Sioux Falls. Woohoo!

Sioux Falls City Council violated so many rules tonight it was ALMOST comical, but I am NOT laughing

UPDATE: Sioux Falls Citizen Survey results down in almost every category since 2021

The City of Sioux Falls does as little as possible when it comes to open meetings

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