RAPID CITY, SD — Local business and public policy professional Emmett Reistroffer today announced his campaign for the South Dakota House of Representatives, District 35, running in the Republican Primary on June 2nd. Reistroffer promises straightforward, no-bull leadership that puts the people of District 35 first, prioritizing real taxpayer relief, public safety and long-term reforms to ensure fiscal responsibility and bring accountability and transparency to Pierre. “District 35 is full of brave men and women who’ve served our country and hardworking families just trying to make ends meet. I’m running for them,” said Reistroffer.
UPDATE: During the informational today there was NO apology from the Parks Department over the detour debacle. But, Councilor Sigette questioned who planned the detours. They replied ‘They did.’ Which seems like a Don Kearney Swanson kind of fib. When I attended the last PTAB meeting the same question was asked of a different parks rep and they replied sheepishly that the contractors actually planned it. So who is telling the truth? It is still disgusting to me that A CITY EMPLOYEE went on TurdBook trying to blame riders for the poorly planned detours. When people say city employees have our best interest I just point to something like this or the runaround and transfers you get when you ask a simple question from a city customer support person on the phone, and they NEVER get back to you.
At the Fiscal meeting, only one committee member was opposed to increasing reserves, Merkouris, and his short and sweet rationale made perfect sense. Why have this money that we haven’t spent in the past (because of State and Federal assistance) and now we want to increase it? He didn’t see the emergency, and neither do I.
IS THIS JUST ANOTHER TAX SCAM TO BUILD THE CONVENTION CENTER?
During the discussion of the reserve increases it was mentioned that if we do this our bond rating will go up. Well wouldn’t that be convenient when you need to fund a Convention Center Bond without a new tax revenue source. This appears to be just another f’ing scam from Poops to get his Convention Center in a railroad swamp built . . . and the council will clap like seals.
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There have been so many ‘tidbits’ over the last week that I will just give a brief review.
AFFORDABLE HOUSING SUIT GOING TO TRIAL
I was told yesterday that the affordable housing development suit AGAINST the city is moving to trial. Ironically, the judge that signed off on the trial just retired. So a trial date has not been set, and they still have to determine if it will be a jury trial. The city and it’s legal counsel tried to get the case dismissed (it was dismissed out of Federal Court but referred to state court). If it is a jury trial it will be a slam dunk for the plaintiff. Basically the city is allegedly holding a development hostage over a affordable housing dispute and NOT allowing them to sell the properties (giving occupancy permits). The city has been up to some real shady/vengeful crap and it will be exposed in the trial. Hopefully they will park a food truck in the court room so some of the media shows up.
CANNEIGHBORS SUE THE CITY OVER REZONES FOR VIOLATING THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN?
So someone in the community who knows a lot about planning and development (not a public employee or politician) informed me of something interesting. They said, “Yah know, neighbors can sue the city over violating the comprehensive plan when approving rezones that are not compatible with that plan.”
So what does this mean? Basically if you are a homeowner and an adjacent homeowner wants to rezone their property to something else, like commercial, they have to go thru a compatibility study (see ex below)
If this study shows that ANY of the compatibility numbers are under 5, it puts the rezone into question. So if the PC and City Council approve a rezone when the compatibility numbers are NOT ALL 5’s and the adjacent neighbors are opposed, this gives them the legal authority to sue over the rezone since it didn’t meet the requirements of the comprehensive plan.
FISCAL COMMITTEE MEETING FOR WHAT?
As we know, this administration and council have NOT been transparent often playing games with agendas in order to mislead or confuse. Committee meetings are usually random with this council, and they decided to have another random Fiscal meeting with a random agenda that says ‘Overview of Proposed Ordinance’ with no attached documents. My assumption is they are going to talk about the reserves and other fiscal items, but why not list what you are going to discuss? Why the secrecy? Makes you wonder if they are concocting some kind of tax scheme to get us to pay for the new Convention Center?
WILL THE SIOUX FALLS PARKS DEPARTMENT FINALLY APOLOGIZE FOR REC TRAIL DETOURS?
Recreation Trail Planning & Maintenance by Josh Johnson, Park Operations Manager; Mike Patten, Park Development Manager
At this point I really don’t care that you f’kd up, and I really don’t care about your f’ing excuses and finger pointing. Admit you screwed up with planning and apologize to the folks that pay your wages. I took a ride this morning on a spur towards family park that got a fresh squeeze of oil this summer over the top of horrible cracks. It is so bumpy if you go over 5 MPH in one of the sections you have to wear a mouthpiece or you teeth will rattle out of your head. I was reading a story this week about how Howard Dean is helping to build bike trails across the US on old rail lines, glad to see that no one from our parks department is involved.
GOLF CART TOURS ON THE BIKE TRAIL?
I told you a few weeks back about a friend who took a golf cart on the bike trail (he is disabled and cannot ride a bike). He told me that his mom drove him in the cart and they got a lot of strange looks but it was permitted due to his disability. When he first started researching this the parks department had to look into Federal statutes to see if it was legal. I guess they decided that they would take a shot at it because I saw three, 4-seater golf carts being driven by parks employees on Friday afternoon on the trail. I looked on the city website to see if I could sign up and found nothing about the rides. I wonder if this is recent? They did have permits taped to the hoods of the carts. I have been trying to get people to take bike trail tours on my Rickshaw and have only had 4 couples so far. It’s a beautiful tour. (my trike is a Class II so it is legal on the trail).
THE BOARD OF REGENTS IS TURNING USD INTO A ‘TACO’ UNIVERSITY
USD said Hook’s deletion of the post and issuing an apology were enough to stay at the school.
The Board of Regents were probably told by legal counsel that you will lose this 1st Amendment case, and after you lose your reputation as an institution will go in the toilet. This was a fiscal decision to keep the professor NOT a constitutional one. I hope this professor goes on a speaking tour in SD about the 1st Amendment. When handed lemons . . . And always remember, when referring to someone as a NAZI always say WHITE CHRISTIAN NATIONALIST instead, it is the more WOKE, DEI version of NAZI the radical right has adopted.
WHY DIDN’T WE PUT THE PRISON IN VERMILLION?
Speaking of the institution in the middle of nowhere, with the recent move of the USD medical school to Sux (and the law school probably coming soon after) it makes you wonder if it is time to mothball USD in Vermillion. One suggestion would be to make the Vermillion campus a vocational school and put all the undergraduate studies in Sux. My suggestion would be to convert it into the new prison (like we did in Springfield years ago) and move the entire university to the SE Tech campus.
It took the property tax discussion to get this out in the open, TIFS ARE NOT GOOD, ESPECIALLY IF USED ONLY FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT;
“That told me they were not providing the oversight on these TIFs, that they were just rubber stamping them,” Sibson said.
Well, Sibby, that is what communities across the state do. They are sold a shiny ball and they approve it.
“If they’re not done correctly, they end up being simply subsidies for certain private entities. That’s my overall concern,” Sibson said.
And that is ALL they are these days. Developer Welfare. Parking ramps and condos? How does this benefit the general public? I think if reverted back to Industrial and Affordable Housing which combined only make up 8% of TIFs across the country, you would see more value in them. I think that is what the State Legislature plans to do, or at least make an attempt at changing the law. Good Luck! Sioux Falls and Rapid City and all other larger communities in SD will fight you tooth and nail on this one.
Found this post below on Reddit, NONE of it surprised me. I knew an associate who used to work for Governor Daugaard in HR and the stories they would tell me about state employees and the certain ‘clubs’ that existed in Pierre. They told the governor at one point that it was a serious problem and needed to be handled. Of course nothing happened. I think the thing that stuck with me the most, that several state reps have confirmed to me, ‘NOBODY IN STATE GOVERNMENT WORKS ON FRIDAYS. NOBODY.’;
I am posting this on my burner account to avoid being recognized, and I will not be saying which department I worked in to protect the people who actually do their jobs.
A little less than a year ago, I moved to South Dakota to take a government position. The pay was $61,000 a year, which is more than enough to live on in Pierre. During my time working for the state, I have been horrified by the level of abuse that takes place within our government.
To start, there was literally nothing for me to do. At first, I thought this was just because I was new, but after about a month I quickly realized that this is simply how it is—everyone just pretends to be busy. I maybe had eight hours of actual work to do in an entire week, and that was it. It’s a free-for-all. Nobody does anything, and everyone seems to be okay with that.
Something really needs to be done about this. We have three people doing a job that one part-time employee could handle. It is incredibly wasteful and frustrating to see people watching Netflix or doomscrolling at work instead of doing their jobs. You could cut my department’s workforce by 75% and no one would even notice a difference.
Additionally, the cliques that exist among government workers in Pierre are ridiculous. The gossip is out of control, and if you are not from here—especially if you didn’t grow up here—they will make you feel unwanted very quickly.
I strongly encourage you to reach out to your local representatives and demand action. We are quite literally burning taxpayer money while paying out ridiculous benefits to people who couldn’t care less about being public servants.
There are much better things we should be spending tax payer money on!
At the same time, before offering any incentive like that, we need to consider raising sales tax across the board if we’re going to continue to emphasize reducing property tax.
In the city of Sioux Falls alone, one penny of sales tax can generate almost $100 million each year. An option to capture that revenue, while at the same time pairing a sales tax holiday to provide relief during the year, seems worth exploring.
Our average of 6.11 percent, coming in at No. 36, is quite low, especially when you consider there’s no personal or corporate income tax to help fund government services.
She thinly veiled her support for a sales tax increase with a story about sales tax holidays. How about we put South Dakotans on a permanent sales tax holiday and implement an income tax. I did the math, and if you set it with certain income levels, 60% or more of South Dakotans wouldn’t pay a penny in income taxes. I have argued if we implemented a income tax on households and private business who make over $100K a year (with exemptions for children) and increased the assessments on commercial and ag properties for property taxes, we would have oodles of money for programs while eliminating the sales tax almost entirely. I would keep sales taxes on luxury items and items over a certain dollar value. Sales taxes on anything we need like medical, energy, food, clothing, etc., would be eliminated. Making poor people pay more in taxes so property owners can get a tax cut makes no sense and is defeating the purpose. I support a property tax cut, but other changes have to be implemented for it to work, and we don’t need to increase taxes on things we need, the government needs to budget differently and we need to go after the tax dollars where they are; RICH PEOPLE. But since they control this town and legislature it will never happen.
l3wis 
