While a little rough around the edges, Sierra has proved to be a staunch advocate for her Neighborhood Association (Pettigrew) and other crime stricken neighborhoods in the core. If she gets picked, I believe she will be the 1st Transgender Female to receive the award.
In some kind of bizarro world the city clerk’s office has yet to provide citizens a sample ballot on the city website to download and view before early voting starts next Monday. How are people supposed to study a ballot before voting? I was able to find the sample ballot for MY district (Central) by clicking thru several links and putting in my voter registration information on the SOS website, but it is missing the entire ballot (SE District). You will also notice that for some strange reason they have decided to make it a 2-sided ballot even though everything WOULD fit on the front side. I have been a graphic designer long enough to know that spacing (leading) could have been adjusted to make it fit, but notice they but the controversial lawyer amendment on the back side. How many people will turn it over to vote?
The rumor is the ballot will not print in the local newspaper until about a week before the election with early voting already occurring.
I have also noticed that the media has decided to do mayoral debates only about a week before the election. I think by this time most people have made up their minds.
I think they are trying to discourage early and absentee voting and new voter registration which also expires on March 28th. Make no mistake this is part of the war on transparency this city has been engaged in for years.
The League of Women Voters of Sioux Falls along with the Siouxland Libraries is sponsoring a Voter Registration Event this Saturday, March 26th, 3:00 – 5:00 PM at the downtown library.
People can ask their questions about voting, learn about upcoming elections, check their registration or register to vote right there on the spot.— just in time. Monday is the last day to register for voting in the April 12 city election.
Refreshments and kids activity too.
I got a call late last night from a friend who was chided into going to a country western concert fundraiser for veteran suicide prevention at the Alliance.
He said while it was a good cause and all, he got a good laugh at Poops’ speech (while wearing a cowboy hat) talking about how Sioux Falls is a drinker town and in some weird way should be celebrated, talking about how the Events Center broke a record for most beer sold at a country concert.
While there is a lot of truth to that, not sure what that has to do with suicide prevention. But hey, this is the same guy who didn’t sign up for Covid and said this is a nice town to be homeless in, you know, because of all our fine drinking opportunities.
As I suspected yesterday, an announcement was made that a settlement was reached in the Bunker Ramp debacle.
But was it a good settlement for the taxpayers? Hardly.
Fortunately the only good thing to come from today’s announcement is that it is finally over and it took a mayor almost his entire first term to write a check from our bank account to a failed developer who defrauded us.
The developer(s) didn’t do it on their own, they had the help of two mayors and several former and current city councilors who have yet to apologize to us for the terrible decision they made based on fraudulent information and even obvious information that investing with this group was a bad idea.
I remember sitting in the council chambers listening to citizen (item #44) after citizen come to the podium and plead with the city council to not do this. But even after that initial approval, a second mayor had an opportunity to undue the bad decision of the last mayor and councilors.
He chose to steam ahead because the banksters and bondsters involved needed to make their buck from the bonds. We could have refused the bond and paid a fine and moved on.
Councilors Starr and Stehly tried to do just that and were scoffed at. I told Starr today if any taxpayer asks you about why this sloppy settlement was done this way all he has to say is, “I didn’t vote for it. Go talk to the councilors that did.”
But what makes this announcement even more egregious is listening to what the city attorney and mayor said about the settlement;
“For that reason, the settlement agreement includes reimbursement of $500,000 from the city of Sioux Falls to VRG for a portion of the hard costs it’s leaving on-site, and reimbursement of the $150,000 developer fee previously paid to the city,” TenHaken said.
What about the additional costs to taxpayers to seal off empty floors with cinder block since the developer never finished the project?
Also our litigations costs of $300K.
And why are we paying those costs and the cost of the settlement out of, I am assuming, the general fund? Shouldn’t it come out of the Parking Enterprise funds?
Like I said, glad this is finally kind of over with (we still need to find someone to complete it) but the way this was handled says tons and tons about how the majority of the city council and this mayor has ran this city the past four years . . . on perpetual cruise control and little else.
l3wis 