South DaCola

Sioux Falls City Council approves land transfer in Public Meeting without providing public supposed confidential legal documents

l3wis July 20, 2021 17Comments

At the council meeting tonight you will hear a lot of legal mumbo jumbo about ethics ordinances, Supreme Court rulings and executive confidentiality. The problem is that it’s all horse pucky.

I am still of the opinion that the city council CANNOT meet publicly and vote on publicly announced agenda items in a public meeting without sharing the legalities of this land transfer. This is what they were told tonight, that they would essentially be violating ethics rules if they talked about the legalities discussed in executive session in a public meeting.

The whole purpose of having a public meeting to approve an agenda item, any agenda item, is to release that information publicly to the public before it is voted on.

Ethics be damned if you can approve deals like this in a public meeting without giving the public the legalities of the deal. I believe it is a gross violation of public meeting laws and rules and I would have been sitting up there tonight, I would have recused myself from the vote and stated that I would be violating said rules if I voted on it. I found it interesting that one councilor probably knew that since they were absent tonight, or likely they are heavily invested in the project.

When I talk about corruption and openness in government, this is a prime example. It’s what the public doesn’t know that corrupts the process.

I have never been so disappointed and disgusted as I was tonight watching this boondoggle. What makes it even more hypocritical is the very people who benefitted from this top secret land transfer didn’t even have the courtesy to show up tonight. Go figure.

Sidenote; there is a new public advocate in town that moved here from Florida in March who speaks during public input. He is very well spoken and takes the council to task for the issues with housing, public transportation, internet access monopolies and lack of affordable healthcare for self-employed individuals. It only took this person a couple of months in Sioux Falls to smell the lack of leadership in our city government.

City of Sioux Falls Public Meeting Agenda for July 20-22, 2021

l3wis July 17, 2021 4Comments

There are several interesting agenda items, including another IM 26 task force meeting, in the AM during the workweek at the library where it cannot be recorded or easily attended by working folks. The mayor also lays out the budget for the city, even though according to charter this should be the job of the city council. In the regular city council agenda is the 2nd reading for the land swap deal the smells about as bad as the river it borders. If you go look at this land, it is pretty clear it is controlled by the Corps of Engineers and not the city or the property owner.