OPINION: Sioux Falls City Council Catches Disease From The School Board

The City of Sioux Falls is suffering from the same “We don’t care about the public,” disease which has infected the Sioux Falls School Board.

Because of a six to one vote of the City Council Tuesday Nov. 5, it will now COST you to fight City Hall.

If you live or work in Sioux Falls, chances are you have received a parking ticket. In the past if you believed the ticket was not warranted you notified them of your protest, a hearing was set up, you made your case, won, or lost, and walked away knowing at least you were heard.

Not anymore. On top of the cost of the ticket and your time, city bureaucrats and elected officials are going to take an additional five dollars from your wallet, just to be heard.

OUTRAGEOUS!

To add to your outrage, here are a couple of facts. Last year about 20,000 tickets were written for violations including overtime parking at meters, blocking a hydrant or driveway, or not moving your car when the street is supposed to be plowed. Only 249 tickets were protested. That’s right about one percent went to a hearing.

You think the bureaucrats and city council would be happy only one percent were called into question. You would be wrong.

According to an Argus-Leader story written by J.L. Atyeo, City Council member Rex Rolfing said, “Hopefully, this will control the amount of appeals we have.”

Really? You don’t want taxpayers to disagree with city bureaucrats, so you are going to charge us for the right to do so?  Based on this thinking, we will soon have to pay to disagree with the Mayor in his presence. Next, parking meters or toll gates may appear inside the City Council Chambers which you will have to feed before you can speak at a public meeting. No pennies, nickels, or dimes allowed. You will have to pay a full twenty five cents to get in your quarter’s worth of input.

The deck is once again stacked against us. The City Council is supposed to protect us from persistent encroachment of the bureaucracy.

They have failed and become part of it.