Sioux Falls Parks and Rec

Cathy B. Makes a pitch to help non-profits

l3wis March 28, 2019 0Comments

During the last Parks Board Meeting, Cathy asks the board to discount the booth rates during festivals in city parks for non-profits. She confessed this wasn’t the first time she asked, but was told she had to go thru the proper channels (we will get to that in a moment).

Cathy showed the board how other cities charge non-profits less during festivals. Seems like a great idea. They did their normal ‘Thanks for your time.”

But what I found interesting was Cathy was told she needed to go thru the Parks Board first before the city council. I guess they have to put their ‘blessing’ on it.

Hogwash!

The Sioux Falls city council is the policy making body of the city (it’s written in charter) not the Parks Board (volunteers) or the Parks Director (appointed). The city council could easily move to change the non-profit rate, with or without the ‘blessing’ of the parks board, the director or even the mayor.

Steps into the River, Huge Fail

l3wis March 14, 2019 7Comments

I understand we are having massive flooding, so this post isn’t really about the flooding, but about why this project was way over the top. You can READ HERE all my posts going back to the beginning of the project 9 years ago and how something modest turned into a monster overnight due to a greedy developer making legal threats over a contract signed in the middle of the night with Mayor Munson.

That all aside, I did fight to keep the project modest, speaking at city council meetings and talking to councilors (Kermit was the only one that agreed). One of the options discussed, which would have been very reasonable and would have prevented any long term damage like the current situation we have was redoing the trail extra wide (like they did) and landscaping the entire area with natural rock and natural flowers and plants lining the river. Not only would have it been beautiful, it would have been very low maintenance. Instead we wasted millions on high maintenance infrastructure, as you can see above. And now we want to put a $2 million dollar effigy to egos on top of it all.

When a city decides to do projects like this, they really need to look at the long term costs of building such structures. I don’t even want to know what it will cost to repair all the damage from this latest flood. If we would have went with plan B, as I suggested, cleanup would have been a couple of people with rakes and some re-seeding, but instead we have Bread & Circus.

Parks Board Member suggests we build whole new clubhouse after golf cart shed burns down

l3wis January 21, 2019 8Comments

And they wonder why we wanted these meetings recorded?

During last Wednesday’s Parks board meeting there was a discussion about a temporary golf cart shed for 2019. One of the parks board members suggested OR asked if it would just make more sense to build a new clubhouse when rebuilding the shed (I’m not sure who said this, because they have yet to video record the meetings so we could tell who is talking). In Director Kearney’s defense he basically said that it needs to be looked at in the CIP budgeting process this year. Makes you wonder if something was promised to the new golf management contractor and a few people on the board seem to know what that is.

So if my unattached garage burned down by accident, do you think my homeowners insurance would give me enough money to rebuild my house? Hell no. If the insurance company pays for rebuilding a simple shed, then we rebuild the shed. We don’t go into full building mode. There is nothing wrong with the Elmwood clubhouse, this isn’t MCC, and we really are not competing with them. I have felt for a long time we should either sell the golf courses or just charge a flat lease. The city doesn’t need to be in the golf business anymore, especially with so many regional courses. I felt the same way about the indoor pool.

Speaking of the indoor pool, I find it interesting that while this is a government holiday, the Midco is open, but the libraries are NOT. With school in session today, where are a lot of the kids supposed to go for after school programming while waiting for parents to get off work? Maybe they can come and swim for free at the Midco?