City Harassment News Update

The Newsracks dispensing this paper at City Hall and The Public Library had their papers stolen for the first ten days, and when we announced they were being stolen they must have gotten legal advice, stopped stealing them and moved them to bottom of rack out of notice and reach of the public.

This apparently takes them out of the "stealing" category. One of our employees replaced them daily and they have now stopped this practice of removing the papers at the library and city hall sidewalk machines.

The $280.00 newsrack stolen, gone missing or what ever terminology, at Walmart West sidewalk, had a police report filed but we expect no action on ever seeing that rack again.

Rack was immediately replaced and new machine has been in place unmolested.

The Fake Administrative appeal the city conducts with a local attorney (acting as judge) hand selected, paid for by the prosecutor, is rehired for next weeks hearings apparently only if he rules for the city.

You are told this "Fake Appeal" is appealable to Circuit Court so if it is not on the up and up you have a shot at a legitimate appeal.

You are asked at the administrative hearing if you intend to appeal the matter to circuit court.

In our case, ( and all others who appeal ) to the circuit court, pay a filing fee and when time for a hearing the city attorney files an action (see complete filing on our web site) saying the city has it fixed so it is not appealable to circuit court and any appeal must therefore be thrown out ( and until now is always thrown out. )

This all happening despite the city attorney office themselves telling the unsuspecting citizen victim of this ruse that it is appealable to circuit court.

In our case we filed that this was in direct violation of both our State and Federal constitutional rights and was an outright fraud, (see our exact filing on our web site) and that all such fines and actions by the city under this ruse ever issued should be declared null and void and fines refunded.

The circuit court has not ruled on this and remains in limbo.

On the day we notified the city of the appeal, the City sent us a new ticket with a "Two Hundred Dollar Fine."

When the department head was asked why this was done while the city right to do so "was under appeal," he answered that the "City Attorney" had ordered him to do so.

The city has now notified us they have granted us, on this second fine and ticket, this time for $200. another of the fake appeals, (city administrative hearing) with this one set for April 18th.

We will report on that in next issue and on the web site.

We update the web site weekly, and this little publication about every two weeks.

Information we have is that NO ONE has ever had a city ruling overturned in the fake City Administrative hearing appeal.

Also it looks like ALL circuit court appeals have never been heard, from what we can find.

We have the City Attorney Circuit Court complete filing to get this appeal thrown out, on our site just as they filed it and apparently routinely used to have these appeals thrown out.

The city has it set up so they are not appealable, even though they tell you they are appealable.

No matter how you slice it, this is TOTAL arrogant FRAUD on the city attorney office part.

When and if our circuit court appeal of the first ticket is thrown out routinely (and of course our losing the Administrative Hearing) (fake court) (on April 18th,) will be appealed to circuit court and when we get that routinely thrown out, then we will file a federal court action with a lot of evidence of this ongoing arrogant violation of our constitutionally protected rights.

Including the Sioux Falls set up to deliberately deny our right to appeal, we will appeal not only an unneeded ordinance, itself unconstitutional as written, but also unconstitutional actions and steps to preclude a legitimate appeal of city actions and ordinances.

It has been announced the city is hiring an "additional inspector" at 47k plus salary.

This apparently is number nine.

This works out at $24.65 an hour and the research department at the public library reports such city employees receive benefits that cost the city 56% of salary additional.  

This means the total cost to the taxpayers of the additional inspector will be $37.48 per hour.

According to their own statistics 80% of this "inspection" time, he will NOT be primarily searching for and removing blight by citing violators he finds.

80% of his time will as usual be responding to anonymous phone calls from vindictive neighbors, and not verifying the complaint itself but using this cart blanc to find anything at all no matter how slight to cite the person complained about, not once but over and over.

Meanwhile others in the neighborhood that have ten times worse situation, existing for the last ten years, their violation is not cited at all and blight continues as the inspectors spend their time only harassing those who have been "turned in" over and over again.

Revenge by any party who has found the city can be hired (free) to drive you out of town.

Out of 169 people they harassed in the last year that we did a mailing to, 43 came back, MOVED, left no forwarding address.

We have received calls from many people that have been harassed and many have mentioned they have been so upset by the injustice done then by the city they are considering moving out of Sioux Falls.

Those that already have of course we do not hear from.

We are in that boat and are going to move as a result several parts of our business and jobs out of town.

Keep up to date at http://siouxfallsclassaction.com.   Tell others about the web site and if you do not have a computer, stop at the library and ask the librarian to pull that web address up on a computer for you if not familiar with a computer.

Multiply 9 inspectors at a cost of $38 an hour each, times 80% of their time and you get the total cost of the "free" city harassment service.

These inspectors do have a legitimate function, but that is NOT what they are doing, they are primarily involved in harassing those who are victims of vindictive neighbors.

If these inspectors were doing only the legitimate work to remove city blight and health violations they would need a far smaller number.

They have run amuck in Sioux Falls, with actions clear out of reason, since there until now has been NO APPEAL available to review the legitimacy of any of their actions.

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