Sioux Falls
City leaders fund child care center with tax district typically used for roads, sewer
Brooke Rollag cannot work without child care. The mother of four is the economic development director for the Lake Area Improvement Corporation in Madison. Her job is to understand what businesses need to locate and expand in the area. And in Madison, those businesses need child care. “Child care is infrastructure,” Rollag said. “When you […]
Severe weather becoming larger factor for concert-goers, fair director says
SIOUX FALLS — Insurance coverage allowed South Dakota’s most well-attended fair to avoid the sting of financial loss in 2023. Sioux Empire Fair Director Scott Wick told Minnehaha County commissioners on Tuesday that a severe weather shutdown on two separate days could have tanked the fair’s profitability, but a $313,000 insurance payout and strong attendance […]
‘We’re going to have these conversations’: New sustainability coalition forms in Sioux Falls
A newly formed coalition is encouraging more conversation around sustainability efforts and policy in Sioux Falls and South Dakota. The Sioux Falls Sustainability Coalition is made up of already established organizations in South Dakota, including environmental groups SoDak350, Citizens’ Climate Lobby (which has chapters in Sioux Falls and Rapid City) and Dakota Rural Action, as […]
South Dakota-based health system chooses new leader
One of the state’s major health systems has a new leader. James “Jim” Dover has been named the next president and CEO of Sioux Falls-based Avera Health, one of the largest not-for-profit rural health care systems in the Midwest. His first day with Avera will be Oct. 23. Dover joins Avera following Bob Sutton’s resignation […]
Sioux Falls aims to boost efficiency at state’s busiest regional 911 call center
For more than a fifth of South Dakota’s population, a call to 911 puts them in touch with someone from Metro Communications in downtown Sioux Falls. Despite its size and its role in public safety, Metro Communications doesn’t have its own legal team or human resources staff. That’s led to a host of headaches for […]
Supply chain struggles complicate cities’ transition to electric vehicles
Morgan Jackson would love to get a few more gas-electric hybrids for the Sioux Falls Police Department. The SFPD’s four hybrids are 25-37% cheaper to fuel than the rest of the fleet. That’s no small savings for police cruisers, which average 30,000 miles a year. Non-hybrids burn up an average of $43,000 a month in […]
First tiny homes for vets ready in Sioux Falls
SIOUX FALLS – Project managers and advocates threw open the doors of the first five tiny homes for veterans in Sioux Falls on Tuesday morning. The homes are the first in a planned village of transitional housing for homeless veterans in southeast South Dakota. The village is about a mile from downtown Sioux Falls, tucked […]
Sioux Falls, like the state, turns down climate funding after Rapid City applies
Sioux Falls has decided not to seek federal grant money to reduce greenhouse gases and other air pollution, following Rapid City’s decision to apply for the funding. Meanwhile, South Dakota is one of four state governments that declined to participate in the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program. The program would have provided the state with […]
Will the state’s biggest city be small-thinking or visionary on the climate?
Have Sioux Falls voters elected leaders with narrow minds and small thinking, or visionaries with strategic plans and goals for a better Sioux Falls? In February, Mayor Paul TenHaken announced that the detailed, carefully considered, and widely vetted city Sustainability Plan with clear goals and objective measures was being replaced by a framework of phony […]
Nonprofit tagged to enroll low income South Dakotans in monthly internet discount program
A Sioux Falls nonprofit is one of five recipients nationally of a new grant to connect people to the internet. Roughly one in six South Dakotans don’t have access to high-speed internet, according to state data from 2021. In Sioux Falls, the state’s largest city, roughly 15% of households lack internet access at home or […]
Transgender employee at center of contract controversy pledges to fight on
Jack Fonder trusted his doctor. He’d spent years under her care, and she understood his medical history. But that changed when he transitioned. “It was one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had,” he recalled. Fonder is a transgender man – a person whose gender identity is as a man, but was assigned female sex […]
Feds recover $280,000 in back wages and damages from Hibachi Grill
The U.S. Department of Labor has recovered $279,070 from a Sioux Falls buffet restaurant that paid kitchen workers a flat monthly salary and denied them overtime wages for hours over 40 in a workweek, the department announced Thursday in a news release. An investigation by the department’s Wage and Hour Division found Hibachi Grill & Supreme […]