SF City Council

1st Amendment SF City Council Sioux Falls

2025 Sioux Falls Community Survey

l3wis September 16, 2025 0Comments

Here is a LINK to the survey as a document. You can’t fill it out, but you can download it and review it. You have to have an invitation to do the survey. I completed it today. I think this is the 2nd time I was chosen to fill it out. Interesting questions. Sorry kids, I am going to bring down those averages 🙁

Speaking of crazy surveys, here is one I saw yesterday about violence or threats against local officials. Look at the wild waffling the topics do with what is going on nationally. We are in a very bad populist moment. There were some people at the council meeting tonight saying positive and negative things about Kirk. None of it was surprising, same talking points on both sides. A friend asked me this week if my boss would fire me for blogging about Kirk in the manner that I did. I laughed and said, ‘Fire Me? They would probably give me a raise.’

1st Amendment Developers Development Planning Commission SF City Council Sioux Falls

Planning Commission still has crappy attendance

l3wis September 16, 2025 0Comments

As you can see from the PC’s website, they are supposed to have 9 members in attendance with one of them being non-voting (chair). They haven’t had a full house for YEARS! They have been warned about it by me personally and the council. I told a councilor last week when the agenda came out to look at all the rezones, all approved by 3 votes. He must have spread the news to his fellow councilors because Curt brought it up during the council meeting. He asked how they can approve something with 3 votes? Jason, from the planning office, who will lie to no end (Don Kearney must be mentoring him) said some had to recuse themselves and it was all consent agenda. It wasn’t, and why are we having planning members with conflicts? I know this is a volunteer position, but if you can’t attend the ONE meeting a month or you have multiple conflicts, maybe you should NOT take the position or resign. I would love to sit on the Planning Commission as a regular person not a business/developer/architect insider, as it currently is. If I was the city council, I would reject ANY recommendations from the PC unless it has at least 7 votes of approval, if not, send it back to the commission the next month. Trust me, if you do this a couple of times, developers and contractors will be LIVID and my guess is attendance would improve.

1st Amendment SF City Council Sioux Falls Taxes

UPDATE: Why is the city proposing an increase in our reserve funds?

l3wis September 10, 2025 8Comments

UPDATE: While the reasons are still murky why they are doing this, there was some hints last night. They pretty much want to take more of the 2nd penny to fill the reserves. Why are they nervous about the reserves? Because the Feds are turning off the faucet. Local governments especially should work off of a balanced budget with the taxes they collect. Any additional funds from the state or feds should be considered ONE TIME MONEY to be used on needed infrastructure upgrades. Those dollars should never be considered as part of a permanent, ongoing budget. But this is what the city has done for years. Did you know that only two-thirds of the city’s budget is covered by local taxes and fees? The city has been using these extra monies to inflate the budget. The city should NEVER have a savings account. I think 25% is good enough for emergencies but anything above that needs to be spent or refunded. When I see $80 million in a city’s reserve fund, I don’t see prudence I see a community being overtaxed. Want to make significant cuts that will save citizens millions without effecting services? Cut staff. I figured if you cut 5-10% of employees in the city you could save up to $25 million a year. Salaries and benefits are paid from the 1st penny. We would have oodles of money to fill the gap. Recently a mayoral candidate says they plan to hire a HR director that will do a full review of ALL city employees and job performance. And the ones that don’t cut the mustard, well, they’ll be shown the door. This is past due. I think ALL city employees should be re-interviewed each year for job performance. I have often said, city employees are an investment, and we should take care of those investments, and when we have a bad one, we need to sell.

(Item #13) It is hard to understand where this is coming from;

This resolution is establishing reserve goals for the City’s General Fund and Sales/Use Tax Fund. Where the City is to maintain a General Fund available balance be at 25-35 percent of that year’s expense budget, maintain a 25% reserve minimum at year-end, establish the 10-year general fund forecast maintains reserves at or above 25% for each fiscal year, and maintain a Sales/Use Tax reserve equal to 3 percent of the total sales tax revenue budgeted for that fiscal year.

I will wait and see ‘why’ this is being proposed, but what I find interesting is this is being sponsored by the mayor while it is the duty of the council to implement this;

WHEREAS, the Home Rule Charter of the City of Sioux Falls authorizes the Council to appropriate City funds and set City policy; and

WHEREAS, the City Council desires adequate reserves to cash flow City government, mitigate risk from unforeseen reductions in revenue and changes in the economic environment, and meet any emergencies; and

WHEREAS, the City Council desires to ensure the long-term fiscal responsibility of the City; and
WHEREAS, the City Council desires an ongoing plan for a fiscally sound budget; and
WHEREAS, the City Council expects potential new revenue streams be approved prior to final
adoption of the budget.

Instead of trying to spend down some of the reserves (we have around $30 MILLION over what the current ordinance requires) for needed projects (not playlands) they are just going to make the reserve fund bigger so the council can’t touch it.

1st Amendment Mayor TenHaken SF City Council Sioux Falls

One the funniest starts to a Sioux Falls City Council meeting

l3wis September 9, 2025 3Comments

Poops was a comedian tonight, though I don’t think he realized it. After the invocation (in which a pastor did a nice job of speaking about immigrants) Paul read a NEW statement about public input (Let’s call it the Sierra rule);

The city has an interest in maintaining civility and decorum during the public comment sessions of its meetings and has adopted rules to achieve the dual goals of ensuring the efficient conduct of the people’s business and fostering citizen participation in that discussion, part of these rules require any presenter from making any personal, pertinent or slanderous remarks which include making any personal attacks on any previous presenters.

Why do politicians always confuse the 1st Amendment with the 2nd Amendment? The 2nd Amendment is the only Amendment you can regulate (it’s in the language), not so much with the 1st. he cannot control what anyone says, that is a violation of their constitutional rights. As for slander or libel, that is ON the person standing at the podium. If they say something that is libelous about a city employee, the city can sue that individual. If they something libelous about another constituent, that person can sue them. It is NOT on this body if someone says something libelous at the podium, it is ON the constituent. And further more how can you predetermine if what is said is true or not? I see all kinds of lies coming from the podium, but sometimes it is hard to distinguish (mostly occurs when directors are at the podium). You can put policies in place until you are blue in the face, the 1st Amendment remains unchanged, and conservative and liberal judges have agreed since it was put on paper.

There were also two incidents in recent weeks of 1st Amendment violations in SD. A person at a Pennington County Commission meeting and a person at a Canton City Council meeting were threatened with removal and arrest. The citizens fought back. At the commission meeting, the constituent even threatened to do a citizens arrest of the chair for violating Federal law 🙂

We need to knock this crap off. With a wannabe dictator in DC, this is NO time for local governments to be squashing FREE speech, quite the opposite.

I have made it a priority to tell ALL mayoral candidates that I will be up their asses if they don’t embrace transparency and open the books when they become mayor.

1st Amendment Property Taxes SF City Council

The City of Sioux Falls Finance Director is a real FIREBALL

l3wis September 4, 2025 0Comments

After the Finance Director, Shawn ‘Fireball’ Pritchett put on his best performance to date to the city council Tuesday night supporting a property tax increase, some councilors were not buying it.

Why?

Well, because it’s strange that Fireball budgeted in the tax increase for 2026 before the council even approved it. I have no doubt the city council will pass this, either with 5-6 votes or a 4/4 tie with the mayor approving it. But what if the council votes this tax increase down? Then what? Well, the finance director would have to adjust the budget.

It is the council’s job to control the budget, and by charter they really are the ones supposed to be compiling it. So how does Fireball get away with budgeting for an assumed tax increase BEFORE the council approves that increase? Cart before horse. Reminds me of the Riverline promotion without a revenue source to pay for it. I guess I would have found the revenue first before pushing this forward. I would vote against this increase so Fireball has to do his job and actually put a budget together that focuses on fiscal restraint and not ‘assumed’ increases. I can’t believe we have 10 more months of this crap.

CITY NEEDS TO LIVESTREAM ALL PUBLIC MEETINGS ON YOUTUBE

The city’s agenda page is STILL broken after almost 16 years, just last night while watching the planning meeting it was screwing up. I sent this email to the entire city council, we will see what they do. I have been requesting this for several years with NO results;

Hello,

Trust me, with conversations with councilors current and past, I get your frustration with the video system on the city website, it started failing as Munson was leaving office and has never really been fixed since, and it appears it is getting worse. Several meetings over the past month have had video glitches. There is something you can do for a temporary/permanent fix. I would suggest keeping the current system so people can follow along the agenda, but for those who are only listening or watching the meetings they can also stream in YouTube. The benefit of the stream is it is FREE, in fact if you would put ALL of our public meetings on YouTube you would probably generate ad revenue from it. Also, almost every single local government in South Dakota uses YT to stream meetings, including the 2 local commissions and school board. The benefit is you can rewind the meeting at any time if you missed a speaker and the meeting is available for review IMMEDIATELY after the meeting ends. This is way past due. Now, I would assume that since the media department reports to the Mayor it is in his wheelhouse to get this fixed, but council meetings are under your review. My suggestion would be to pass an ordinance that requires the media department to live stream ALL public meetings. I would also give them 60 days to implement the YT stream in case they have to upgrade equipment or do some training (I learned how to make a YT video in 20 minutes). I also stress this needs to be in CHARTER, no handshake deals that get forgotten about in the next administration, I would even go a step farther and see if a council staffer can manage this and not even involve the media department.

As I said, way past due, and you can force the hand of the administration to comply by passing an ordinance. See, government can be easy sometimes, it only took 16 years.

Scott

2025 Sioux Falls Community Survey

Planning Commission still has crappy attendance

UPDATE: Why is the city proposing an increase in our reserve funds?

One the funniest starts to a Sioux Falls City Council meeting

The City of Sioux Falls Finance Director is a real FIREBALL

You Missed

The more things change, the more they stay the same

UPDATE II: Sioux Falls City Councilor could be facing ethics violations after tonight’s vote on Tre Ministries project

UPDATE: City Council Agenda (Dec 2-3)

Seems we are a we bit behind on snow plowing