Sioux Falls

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Mayor’s ‘staff’ gets busted last night

l3wis November 5, 2025 1Comments

Besides all the lying going on about the Sioux Falls Parks Master Plan, to which councilor Sigette said that the administration was NOT being transparent, there was another item that stirred the pot. Item #34 was a resolution to surplus the city parking lot at 13th and 1st. At first glance, this seems like a good idea, since that space could accommodate a whole host of things. If I had a couple million to blow I would do a 4-story structure with a partial courtyard, retail on 1st floor and 3 stories of studio apartments. I would even encourage it to be ‘carfree housing‘ so you wouldn’t need to have parking. Most of these developments have a couple of grocery runner e-cars they can use for errands as rentals;

But I knew when this popped up on the agenda, the jig was up. It was pretty obvious to me and many constituents who showed up to testify that the city already had a buyer (it was confusing as to who this developer may be, but it has some involvement with the Shriners next door). It really doesn’t matter who is buying the lot, as Sigette said, the administration is NOT being transparent, not just about the parks but parking downtown.

Normally how these supposed hearings go is the city staff put it on the agenda under the radar, they bully the council into voting for it and keeping their mouths shut and the public is the only one that appears at the meetings knowing this is wrong and basically corrupt. Not so fast. The council reamed the parking and planning staff about this, to which the planning director had to admit there is an interested party and why they are doing it.

SO WHY DON’T YOU JUST SAY THAT!? WHAT THE F’CK IS SOOOOO TOP SECRET ABOUT SELLING A PARKING LOT?!

Because, corruption can’t help itself. The mayor’s ‘staff’ has been getting away with these insider deals so long ($100 million in no-bid contracts for example) that it is just second nature for them. They were caught red handed last night, and it was fun to watch the constituents and the council double team the ‘staff’ over this corruption and lies. It was about time, and I hope ALL council meetings moving forward are like this, calling out the obvious corruption and lies of the staff.

And while the discussion last night was contentious, I think the council was extremely professional on how they approached it (they looked like an entirely different council last night) this is how government is supposed to work. Staff is supposed to give the council and the public ALL pertinent information, if they do not, it must be demanded of them before any votes take place, this finally happened last night. Erica’s ‘staff’ uh, I mean, Paul’s ‘staff’ is officially on notice and I’m lovin’ it!

I think with the government shutdown, this is prime time to evaluate ALL public employees and not only their job performance but their integrity and ethics. I can handle a little laziness, what I can’t tolerate is lies.

1st Amendment SF City Council Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Parks and Rec

What a stupid argument

l3wis November 4, 2025 1Comments

There was more stupidity occurring at the council meeting tonight. And guess what?! It’s happening again for the same reason; LACK OF TRANSPARENCY.

Just look at this stupid graph they have been man-splain’ to the council for over a year;

Notice, this is square footage of PUBLIC facilities. So what is the square footage of private facilities? As councilor Greg Neitzert said at a meeting last year; ‘There’s a gym on every corner of this town.’ I think he made it pretty clear when they first presented this stupid graph that there was NO comparison to the private sector, even after that warning over a year ago, they are still pitching this stupid argument. Sure, we may not have as much public fitness as other communities, but if you need to workout in Sioux Falls, you can find a gym and it is likely more affordable then the city.

I often tell councilors you need to support more outdoor / FREE recreation because it is something the private sector DOES not provide, and that is why we DON’T have much public indoor rec because we have an amazing city funded outdoor park system! How about we improve this? Or at least fix the broken equipment at Rotary Park!

Parks and Rec need to focus on what they do best, outdoor recreation and stop trying to act like they need to run a Gold’s Gym (I think they went bankrupt?)

1st Amendment Public Utilities Public Works Sioux Falls

UPDATE: Cry me a river . . . of crap

l3wis November 4, 2025 6Comments

UPDATE: What’s with all the crying these days? I see he goes to same stylist as Sue Peterson. The intro was priceless, ‘Known to many as Mayor Mike’. Hey, Buddy, you lost that title 7 years ago, and you ain’t getting it back.

Public Works director, Cotter, did learn something from Huether, turn on the water works, uh I mean sewer works. No doubt it was an exhaustive project for Cotter, over 270 days of construction. But I am not sure it is worth crying about. Mr. Cotter gets paid $232K a year + benefits. We pay these wages because it is important job and it is hard. I compliment Cotter on getting this done, but it is his job. I also fault Cotter for not taking a firmer stand with Mike on the Sewer expansion. This project was supposed to be done BEFORE the Event Center and if we would have gone that route you would have saved taxpayers over $50 million in capital expenses and millions in interest payments, but Mike wanted that tin can so bad he had Cotter bury the project and any discussions about it. Cotter should have got in front of the council and pushed them to implement the project before the Event Center. So I guess it was appropriate to cry. While the project was a success, it would have been a heckuva a lot cheaper if we would have started it 10 years ago.

Rhoden spoke briefly at the end of the presser, and he was the only one that said anything that made sense. He basically said, these are the kind of (infrastructure) projects the government is setup to take care of. I agree, I have often said SF out of control spending could be tapered back by simply dedicating tax dollars to NEEDS not WANTS.

And now that the sewer plant is finished, get ready for the $30 million dollar bond next year to make repairs to the Denty. It’s coming.

WHEN YOU BUY A NEW CAR YOU HAVE TO BUILD A GARAGE FOR IT

I guess the Public Works department is angling for a new garage to house the new snow plows. The rumor is a building 100 x 300 FT. building. This should come as no surprise. They bought all these maintainers now they have to store them somewhere. Funny how the finance director didn’t mention this when he wanted the council to buy the maintainers. Even a pole barn that size will be millions. It reminds me of the applicant who showed up to the Zoning Board for an adjustment on his garage. He wanted to extend his garage 3 feet in the front. When asked his reason he said, “I bought a new truck and it doesn’t fit in the garage.” 🙂

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

The City of Sioux Falls needs a Public Information Officer

l3wis November 4, 2025 3Comments

After having several individual discussions with councilors over the past few months about public input, libel and the city’s inability to live stream a video in YouTube it all came to a head at tonight’s meeting.

Mayoral Candidate David Z. came to the podium tonight and asked for some public information. He got nowhere and the council seemed confused also. I know I mentioned this awhile back, but the solution to these problems with transparency is for the city to hire a full-time public information officer who works for 3 entities; Law Office, City Council and Mayor’s Office. It would be preferable that this person had a law degree or is a paralegal. They would also have to have some marketing bonafides. Either way, this person would be the liaison to the media and the public when it comes to information. They would manage all pressers, media inquiries, constituent concerns, etc. They would also manage all of the city’s meetings making sure they are noticed correctly and the right materials are posted with the agenda. I would also like them to take on a side project of creating an information tab on the city’s website that makes it easy to find information, preferably on the front page (the current search engine is a gigantic POS*).

I used to think that many city employees just don’t care about following open meeting laws so they don’t.

But it is NOT that.

As I understand it, each department manager is responsible for their meeting’s agenda and with their other duties, they really shouldn’t be asked to be open government experts. I just think they don’t have anyone guiding them to do the right thing. If you had one or even two people in the city who were in charge of this, it would take a lot of stress off of these directors and managers that have other important work to do besides looking up open meeting laws.

*I don’t use the city’s website search engine, I learned another trick that works better; When you open Google type in; siouxfalls.gov: topic. In other words type the topic you are searching for like ‘building permits’. It isn’t perfect but it works much better then the city’s website. Good thing we paid almost $1 million for the upgraded website. We got taken to the cleaners.

1st Amendment County Commission Downtown Sioux Falls Elections Homeless Lincoln County Minnehaha County SF City Council SF School Board Member SF School District Sioux Falls

We lack TRANSPARENCY in local government

l3wis November 3, 2025 4Comments

I agree with Joe that there is a lack of leadership, experience, accountability, common sense and diligence;

That kind of leadership requires listening, relationship-building, and the willingness to work together. It means re-establishing trust among institutions that have drifted apart and reminding everyone that Sioux Falls’ success has always come from collaboration, not isolation.

Many of these leadership issues can be solved with one word; TRANSPARENCY. When you have a government that is open to the public’s ideas by bringing them along with the process you get more involvement and when the public is more involved you have a better planned community. The problem with local government on all levels isn’t a lack of leadership or even laziness it’s a lack of openness and accountability. You could have 9 monkeys sitting on the dais and the city would still run incredibly well because of transparency. I am of the position that it doesn’t matter who is on that dais, as another realtor announces a run for council today, if we have folks that are willing to open the books and bring the public along that is ALL the leadership you need. Because real leaders are honest, open and accountable.

THE SOLUTION TO THE TRANSIENT PROBLEM IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES

After reading this article last night about transients at the downtown library I sent this email to Jodi;

I am putting an invitation to you and a companion to ride on the back of my pedi-cab on a weeknight DTSF after dark, I will take you to all the places transients congregate and you can see just how serious it is.

But what I found fascinating about the article is Police Chief Thum offering a solution to the problem without realizing it;

My point is not to lack compassion for those who probably could benefit from a quiet, safe place to spend their day. Ideally, we’d find something more productive for people to do in such a place — maybe we offer classes or even the chance to create art — but if safe shelter with a way to charge a phone is really all people are looking for, maybe we need to create that somewhere other than the library.

We need the library to function as it was intended to promote literacy and access to information and related resources, not as a social services agency.

At the top of the post I talked about common sense in government. Are you listening to what you are saying? Maybe we need a temporary shelter? It is pretty obvious to me that we need a temporary shelter this winter for these folks where they can stay 24/7 if they wish. Will it cost money? Sure, but the alternative is paying for ER visits when we are scraping them from the cold concrete in a parking ramp which costs way more then just funding a facility for the winter months. I would also hand every single one of them a bus ticket when they arrive at the shelter if they desire to go home.

This is what I mean when it comes to leadership. You obviously see the issue, you also obviously see the solution, so why not fix it?

Mayor’s ‘staff’ gets busted last night

What a stupid argument

UPDATE: Cry me a river . . . of crap

The City of Sioux Falls needs a Public Information Officer

We lack TRANSPARENCY in local government

You Missed

UPDATE: 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

Libertyland TIF should go to a vote of the entire state!