snow removal

1st Amendment Sioux Falls snow removal Snowgates Uncategorized

Seems we are a we bit behind on snow plowing

l3wis November 30, 2025 8Comments

I have been watching how the city will handle snow removal using mostly city workers and equipment. While this snow event wasn’t that bad and most residential streets are passable (especially if you go e-trike) there are challenges. The street crews were out early, which was great, but it seems they are behind on residential plowing;

Zone 2:

North / South Streets plowing will begin at 8 a.m. on Sunday, November 30, 2025
All vehicles parked on north/south streets are subject to ticketing and towing until streets have been plowed or until 5 p.m., whichever is earlier. Although this requirement is in effect only until 5 p.m., any continuing snow removal operations may impact your use of the street for parking.

East / West Streets plowing will begin at 8 p.m. on Sunday, November 30, 2025
All vehicles parked on east/west streets are subject to ticketing and towing until streets have been plowed or until 5 a.m., whichever is earlier. Although this requirement is in effect only until 5 a.m., any continuing snow removal operations may impact your use of the street for parking.

I live in this zone on a N/S route. Normally if the Alert is at 8 AM, I am plowed out no later than Noon. It is almost 4 PM, and they just rode by, and didn’t even bother to use snowgates even though they were on the plow. The next mayor needs to immediately fire any operator who is caught on video NOT using the snowgate. It is city ordinance and when you violate it, it is grounds for termination. This is worrisome for many reasons. It means they are behind, and no surprise, and this wasn’t even a major storm.

I HATE predicting these things, but I knew with fewer resources there was NO WAY the city was going to be plowed out at the same rate when using private contractors and equipment. Hopefully there wasn’t 150 car accidents in one day!!!

1st Amendment Downtown Sioux Falls Public Utilities Public Works SF City Council Sioux Falls snow removal Snowgates

City Council defers Snowplow purchases

l3wis August 20, 2025 2Comments

It seemed a majority on the council were suspicious of this deal and why we need to buy these maintainers BEFORE the yearly budget is approved. And for good reason. So the question that we ALL need an answer to is; ‘Was it the city’s idea to purchase the maintainers or the contractor?’ I don’t know, but the more that gets revealed it seems this deal was concocted and pitched to the city by the contractor wanting to ‘rid’ themselves of the used equipment. So why would they need to get rid of this equipment? Long story short, the contractor who leased the equipment had the contract tied to a major developer who is out of the business now. So did this contractor inform the city they were no longer going to do the lease? And while they were at it, did they offer the city this ‘deal’ to purchase the used equipment we have already been paying leases on? Yup, that’s right folks, they want to sell us the very equipment they have been leasing to us. So since they are apparently not in the business anymore and a major investor has passed away it seems like a sweetheart deal for the contractor and ANY investor he may have had. Be warned council, this isn’t being done to bail out the city, it is being done to bail out a contractor. No surprise, while there is nothing nefarious about the current lease agreement, you have to question the arrangement with the developer, the city and what goes on at the yearly ‘High Tea’ meetings. The city council needs to budget for a NEW lease agreement with a NEW provider after a RFP is put out. I hope the council comes to their senses and looks at the current lease agreement and who is listed on it.

Mayor TenHaken SF City Council Sioux Falls snow removal Snowgates

UPDATE II: Where were the F’ing sanders today?!

l3wis November 30, 2024 6Comments

UPDATE II: I guess the street fleet was out at 7:30 AM on Wednesday, FILLING POTHOLES! The only spots they sanded were bridges and after they left at 3:30 PM they were CALLED back at 4:30 PM to sand, and only a handful of drivers responded to the request. But hey, if you drive a public works truck in the parade of lights you are getting $60 bones an hour. Priorities folks. Priorities. I also heard and still trying to verify there was almost 90 traffic accidents on Wednesday. Surprising? NOT.

UPDATE: I was told the sanders were out at 7:30 AM on Wednesday. I would be curious how many because when I drove to work at 4 PM on Cliff Avenue, parts of 41st street and Minnesota were pure ice and packed snow and I didn’t see one single sander out.

I know I have complained about this before, but today was literally a Sh!t show. With the weather today being what is was I decided to drive my car. Bad decision. While I do have studded snow tires on my bike, I try to avoid riding in the dark when conditions are very icy, but I would have probably been safer on my bike. Normally it takes me about 20 minutes to commute to work (5 miles) it took me 30 minutes today in my car, not just because of the terrible condition of the streets but because multiple streets were closed due to accidents.

I get it, there really wasn’t a forecast for this event, but it shouldn’t matter, it is the END OF NOVEMBER! Those sanders should be ready at ALL TIMES!

I did see them out tonight at 9 PM. Thanks . . . dumbasses.

So besides the personal expenditures of folks vehicles being damaged, we have the police and fire respond to these incidents. And now we are paying NIGHT differential to sand the streets. The pennies the city may have saved by not sanding this morning when the event started doesn’t even come close to the amount being spent on responding to these accidents.

Is our Mayor that stupid?

Maybe so, but it also falls back on his lack of leadership. Dave Munson would have been on the horn to Galen Huber at 6 am sending out those sanders. Why? Because public safety should never have a price tag, it is a requirement of municipal government to provide these services thru the taxes we pay. Makes you wonder if the city is in such dire straights that they can’t even send sanders out? We have around $80 million in reserves. We could sand every road in the state for a year and still not spend it all.

I suggested to a councilor that the council write an ordinance that takes control of street plowing and sanding. Basically it would require the street department to act on their own when there is an event and craft the ordinance in a way that pretty much requires them to act immediately to any winter weather event and take that control away from the mayor.

Public Utilities Public Works Sioux Falls snow removal Snowgates

Is the City of Sioux Falls violating ordinance when plowing streets?

l3wis January 6, 2023 22Comments

It doesn’t fail, when you run a city blog as long as I have, whenever it snows I hear about the removal. I have come to the realization that most people are being nit-picky, but the latest blowback is concerning.

SNOWGATES. By ordinance the city has to use them, unless they decide not to. I know, seems like a pretty big out. During and before the petition drive, Staggers and especially Stehly did extensive research on them, and unless the snow is super wet they work well up to almost 20 inches. The city continues to use a mulligan on them, but they could have been easily used the last two times, which brings us to another problem;

CLEARING INTERSECTIONS. One of the benefits of having snowgates is clearing intersections when the north/south and east/west streets are cleared, instead of creating a massive windrow they can be alleviated immediately.

But one of the glaring problems is this;

Looks like the city is supposed to be clearing snow curb to curb.

I have also heard the city has scaled back on private contractor use. I am not opposed to that, and would rather see city union employees getting the OT instead of a private contractor, but you wonder why this relationship has changed?

Isn’t life so wonderful that the only thing we have to bitch about with local government is how they take the white crap away?

I have often looked at things like public transit and snow removal as basic economic development. When people can safely get to work and make wages that’s a good thing. You kind of wonder how many folks were either terminated or reprimanded during this past storm because they couldn’t make it to work?

Local government is easy. Collect taxes, provide essential services.

Public Works Sioux Falls snow removal Snowgates

What did you think of the city’s response to the last snow storm?

l3wis March 17, 2021 14Comments

Looks like Mayor Stoneless thinks we did a Heckuva job;

I will first defend Public Works and say that many things are out of their control. We often get early Spring heavy snowstorms, this is nothing new and they cause a ton of issues. Also, when it comes to snowgates, I think they tried to use them at first but with heavy snow they often break sheer pins and cause maintenance issues, so that argument is also moot.

What I find interesting is the response time. The two previous administrations tried to get the city plowed very quickly. I have heard behind the scenes that is not the goal of the current Plowing Czar and Mayor. In fact my street wasn’t plowed until after NOON on Tuesday, and it was pretty pointless because most of it had already melted by then.

I will still maintain that this administration is trying to get away with spending less money on snow removal each year. But $94 million dollar tax rebates to egg roll factories from Korea? Money well spent!

Seems we are a we bit behind on snow plowing

City Council defers Snowplow purchases

UPDATE II: Where were the F’ing sanders today?!

Is the City of Sioux Falls violating ordinance when plowing streets?

What did you think of the city’s response to the last snow storm?

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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!