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Sioux Falls Charter Revision Commission

Charter Revision Commission Planning Commission SF City Council Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Charter Revision Commission

UPDATE: Sioux Falls City Council Agenda, Monday, Feb 3, 2020

l3wis 1Comments

This week’s meetings are on Monday due to the council going to Pierre on Tuesday.

Charter Revision Commission Meeting • 3 PM

Only agenda item is a going away party for Departing Members Pauline Poletes and Robert Thimjon. They accomplished their very successful shut down of charter amendments. Party on Garth.

City Council Informational Meeting • 4 PM

On presentation on Arterial Street Sidewalk Installation by Chad Huwe, City Engineer

City Council Regular Meeting • 7 PM

Item #6, Approval of Contracts;

Sub Item #8, $150K to USD Discovery Center

Sub Item #9, $275K to Development Foundation

Sub Item #25, $136K to YMCA for after school programs and

Sub Item #26, $111 to VOA for after school programs.

I wish the merits of these four items would have been discussed in the regular meeting instead of stuffed into the consent agenda.

Item #7, Change orders, we will be handing about $1.5 million to Journey Construction for the Village on the River Bunker Ramp.

Item #20, Transfer of 2020 Retail Liquor License, with video lottery terminals, and 2020 Package Liquor License from Badlands Gaming LLC, Badlands Gaming, 1600 West Russell Street, to South Dakota Veterans Alliance Inc., 1600 West Russell Street. It looks like this deal is moving forward.

Item #25 (29-30), 2nd Reading of TIF agreement with Lloyd Companies and Sioux Steel Development. As I have said in the past this will pass. I guess councilor Stehly will be absent from this meeting and NOT voting on the issue due to previous commitments. I have said that a better approach would be to gift them the River Greenway property (so they can develop it at their expense) and give them a $10 million dollar TIF only for that redevelopment. I think it is a crying shame that local lawmakers across the country are suckered into these kind of agreements which are truly developer handouts and little else. I’m praying for an amendment, but I don’t think it will happen.

Item #26, 2nd Reading, ordinance on campaign financing and elections. I feel there will be some amendments to this item and it will be an interesting to see what is slipped in. I still think that this ordinance should be amended so it is NOT implemented until after the municipal election.

Item #27, Supplemental appropriations for police overtime pay for special events. Like I said yesterday in a post, I fully support this, but I think a discussion should have occurred with the council before the mayor’s office proposed this. It is the council’s job as laid out in charter to be the legislators, not the mayor’s office.

Item #28, Parks and Rec fee increases. You will notice that some of the biggest increases are at the Midco Aquatic Center.

Item #31, Resolution approving preliminary plan for the controversial Golden Gateway addition.

Item #32, A RESOLUTION REMOVING UNCOLLECTIBLE, DELINQUENT ACCOUNTS FROM THE RECORDS. Interesting that these accounts are confidential?

Item #34, Resolution, allowing Landscapes Unlimited to modify the noncompetition clause under the Management Agreement.

Item #35, Charter Revision Commission presents their ballot amendments. I’m urging a vote NO on amendment ‘B’ which would increase the number of signatures needed for a charter revision petition.

More information to come.

Planning Commission Meeting • 6 PM • Wed, Feb 5

Item #2, F, Consent agenda, Sanford Addition for office?

Charter Revision Commission Elections Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Charter Revision Commission Triple Check the Charter

As I predicted, The Sioux Falls Charter Revision Commission did very little in 2019

l3wis 1Comments

As I suspected from the get go, the CRC found a way to kill any meaningful legislation for the city’s April election. Oh but they did find a way to make it more difficult to petition our government;

The petitions shall contain or have attached thereto throughout their circulation the full text of the proposed charter amendment and must be signed by registered voters of the city in the number of at least 5 percent of the total number of registered voters at the last regular city election, or the number of signatures required by state law, whichever is greater.

In other words they are trying to get the voters to pass rules that they have already decided to implement on Triple Check the Charter. Yes, folks, they are applying rules that haven’t been amended yet. Isn’t that special? I also got a kick out of the attorney’s explanation on the ballot;

City Attorney’s Explanation of Amendment B:
The current language is, at times, less stringent in its requirements for charter amendment than what is required by the State Constitution. Such is not permissible under State law, which requires the standards of City charter and ordinances to be at least as stringent as State law. The proposed change, as approved and submitted by the Charter Revision Commission, would ensure that the requirements set forth in the charter for voter initiation of a charter amendment are at least as stringent as those set forth in the State Constitution, thus satisfying State law.

What they are basically saying is we MUST vote yes to satisfy State Law. My question is why aren’t we doing that already? And why are we voting on it? I’ll give you my explanation, you can vote NO on this, there is NO requirement we follow state law on this because we are a Home Rule Charter city, we make the rules when it comes to OUR elections. The SOS doesn’t run our local elections, and he shouldn’t. Don’t believe this poppycock, it is just a scare tactic to make it more difficult to petition our government in Sioux Falls and little else. They are trying to hoodwink the voters into passing this, because they know the requirement is not needed.

I vaguely remember the chair of CRC saying at the beginning of the 2019 meetings that it is the CRC’s job to make sure nothing harmful gets on the ballot that could have unintended consequences if passed. Kettle meet black.

SF City Council Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Charter Revision Commission

Triple Check the Charter petition turned in for review to the Sioux Falls City Clerk’s office

l3wis 3Comments

The new city petition was turned into city clerk Tom Greco this morning for review, the petitioners hope to get the petition back today so they can start collecting. They will have 6 months to collect approximately 6,500 signatures.

Since the 3 changes proposed to the charter are all under ONE section in the charter, it will require only ONE vote to change these 3 things proposed;

  1. Make city council elections a simple plurality.
  2. Remove Mayor from City Council (tie votes will now fail an item and the council chair will run the meetings).
  3. Super majority (6) to pass ANY bonds (no dollar amount would be attached, it would be for ANY bond the city council has to pass.)
Ethics SF City Council Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Charter Revision Commission

Danielson writes guest column about ethics complaint

l3wis 1Comments

Bruce’s column appeared in today’s Argus Leader, read the whole column HERE.

The Home Rule Charter is our city constitution. In theory it is to protect us from abuse while giving local government more latitude to meet statutory needs such as fixing streets, utilities along with fire and police protection. I am a strong proponent of a balanced government structure, without authoritarians ruling the day or weak elected officials being pushed around. We need a balance.

1. The charter establishes a mayor to be elected by the people to lead the city government and its employees.

2. The charter created a city council to be a policy making body to set the rules for the mayor’s administration to follow.

3. To keep everyone on a straight and narrow path, the charter has a section called ethics to keep everyone in order.
The secrecy in SF city government is bad enough, but without a strong balance of ethics, we as citizens have NO recourse.

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