Amidst recent legislative and other actions at the federal and state levels, the Sioux City Council members held their regular meeting on Monday.
Council member Matthew O’Kane voiced his concerns that cuts affecting service agencies focusing on refugees and immigrants will not only leave those served in dire straits, but will redirect the costs of those services on the City.
“It’s fun to call it fiscal conservatism. Fiscal conservatism just simply means that the State is not going to help you pay the check, and you need to figure out a way to pay it yourself,” O’Kane said.
Council member Alex Waters, who met with state legislators last week, added that two passed bills from last year will affect the City budget.
“Just for fiscal year 2026, we’re looking at an approximately $3.2 million dollar deficit. You know, that equates to 25 police officers, 29 firefighters, or cutting all of library services,” Waters said.
*Also in that Sioux City Council meeting, a measure to create a westside low-income housing project near Cook Park took another step forward.
In order to move that project for 42 units along, the council members rezoned some land and legally freed up the former Lamb Arts theater building, which at one time was also a school built in 1939.
The Lamb Arts portion will be rebuilt into 12 units, while a new building adjacent to that at Cook Park will be constructed with 30 units for people to live in in the 400 block of Market Street.
City officials say there is a scarcity of quality housing options for low-income people. Three Sioux City residents wrote the city about the project, with all the saying it should be built somewhere else.
The next step for that low-income housing project is that the developer, Commonwealth Development Corporation, must apply for federal housing tax credits by February 19.
*Additionally, the leader of South Dakota’s primary refugee resettlement program has condemned online attacks by tech mogul Elon Musk regarding the legality of the organization’s federal funding.
The president and CEO of Lutheran Social Services of South Dakota said her group became aware of social media messages from Musk over the past weekend claiming that Lutheran organizations have illegally received federal payments.
South Dakota News Watch reported that Rebecca Kiesow-Knudsen said the payments were authorized by Congress and called the allegations “completely baseless.”
Lutheran Social Services was among many South Dakota nonprofits on the defensive last week, when President Donald Trump’s administration unveiled a plan to halt federal grants and loans and issued a temporary freeze on payments.
That executive action is currently being litigated in federal court, with a judge on Monday extending a temporary block on the funding freeze.
LSS helps resettle immigrants and refugees through its Center for New Americans. The organization said it helped resettle 206 refugees in South Dakota in fiscal year 2023, many from war-torn countries such as Ethiopia and Sudan.
*In other news, two Northwest Iowa school districts will receive state money to boost efforts to leverage community-and-school partnerships to expand access to childcare and support programs for students who will work in the field.
Those grants will go to the Le Mars and Central Lyon school districts, as part of a combined $600,000 to nine schools.
The money is from the Iowa Department of Education, which first went to five districts last year. The money goes to schools that have programs where high-schoolers can exit with credentials to be Child Development Associates to work in the childcare field.
*Additionally, the public is invited to a new technology piece being unveiled on the Wayne State College campus on Wednesday.
There will be an open house at 3:30 p.m. to show people the new cinema production studio in the Humanities Building.
That is a new addition for students in Wayne State's Film Program. Among the new features are a greenscreen wall and a dedicated stop motion animation space.
Another area college working in a new direction with technology is Western Iowa Tech Community College in Sioux City.
In 2024, Mass Communication Program officials announced they been granted a Low Power FM construction permit by the Federal Communications Commission.
That permit allows the department to establish and operate a new radio station, KWSR-LP, at frequency 94.3 FM. That will serve as an expansion of the current streaming station, Comet Radio, which has been in operation for 11 years.
The goal is to have KWSR fully operational to begin broadcasting to the Sioux City area by the end of 2025.
