Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Tamlyn Shimizu: Welcome to Smart in the City, the BABLE podcast, where we bring together top actors in the smart city arena, sparking dialogues and interactions around the stakeholders and themes most prevalent for today's citizens and tomorrow's generations. I'm your host, Tamlyn Shimizu, and I hope you'll enjoy this episode and gain knowledge and connections to accelerate the change for a better urban life.
Today we are back with another episode and also with our mayor series where we are exploring how leadership is transforming our cities, large and small and everything in between.
So we have been giving you more and more stories from the US And I hope you've been enjoying those. And today, this episode is the first of its kind as we are virtually traveling to South Dakota, to the city of Sioux Falls.
So what better person to talk to? Well, of course, the mayor, Paul TenHaken, the mayor of Sioux Falls In South Dakota, U.S. welcome, Paul
[00:00:56] Paul TenHaken: Tamlyn, great to Be on your show. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:59] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely. My pleasure.
So, as you probably know, we like to get started with a little bit of a teaser question to warm up, warm us up for the main interview.
So the teaser I have for you today is if you had to describe Sioux Falls with just three emojis, which emojis would you use and why?
[00:01:20] Paul TenHaken: Boy, I love that question.
You know, the first emoji I would probably use is the rocket ship emoji.
Sioux Falls is one of the fastest growing cities per capita in the US right now. So from 2020 to 2024, according to US Census Bureau data, we were the seventh fastest growing city per capita in the country.
The other six were all in warm climates, you know, people seeking sunshine and warm weather.
It was North Las Vegas and Port St. Lucie, Florida and Texas and then South Dakota. So the rocket ship would certainly be one. We're growing like crazy right now, which is both stressful and exciting.
I think the second emoji I would use would just be one of the smiley face emojis. I mean, we are a very friendly, friendly community.
I think if you would ever find yourself in Sioux Falls and we're walking through our downtown, people look you in the eye when they greet you, and even if their headphones are in, they say hi and they nod at you and they wave at you. And so a very, very friendly community.
I think the third one I would use would be the waterfall emoji. You know, we are the Sioux Falls.
And so Sioux Falls is named after the falls of the big Sioux River. So just like, you know, maybe Niagara Falls for some of The European listeners or some of your international listeners, you know, of the Niagara Falls or the Falls of the Niagara. We are the falls of the Sioux river and that's kind of our namesake of our city. So those would be the three emojis that I think would best represent our great city.
[00:02:58] Tamlyn Shimizu: Great, I love those.
It's not a small city, though. You say that everybody is smiling at each other and saying hello. It has a small town feel. Right, but you're over 200,000, correct?
[00:03:11] Paul TenHaken: Yeah, we're 220,000 people. Our metro statistical area, or MSA is about 320,000.
And so south Dakota, just to give you a little bit of kind of geographic understanding, the whole state is only about 920,000 people. So it is a small state, but about a third of that population lives within the Sioux Falls metro area.
So it's a. It's a huge agricultural and ranching state. Agriculture is our number one economy in the state of South Dakota. But for the urban lifestyle that you may seek in the state, you're going to be coming to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. So, yeah, a little over 300,000 people in the MSA. So as the Sioux Falls economy goes, kind of the whole state economy goes as well.
[00:03:59] Tamlyn Shimizu: Okay, really interesting. Thanks for painting that picture. Also, now I want to paint the picture a little bit better of you as a person. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, how you came to be mayor? Are you from Sioux Falls? Any background that you want to give us?
[00:04:15] Paul TenHaken: Yeah, so I grew up in Minnesota, actually right next door and very non traditional path into politics. Never really envision myself doing this work.
I am a graphic designer actually by trade, web designer. I started a digital marketing firm back when social media wasn't even a term yet. Twitter had just kind of hit the had launched in 2007 and Obama had just won the White House in November of 2007. And he had used digital media in a way that political candidates had never used it before. He was using social media and he was using AB testing with email marketing, and he did things really effectively using digital. And he kind of caught the political world by surprise with how effectively he used digital.
And so I started a digital marketing company in 2008 and kind of rode that wave with social media and digital marketing for the next 10 years and really loved it and was entrepreneur and I built that business and had an absolute blast doing that.
But honestly, Tamlyn just felt a little bit hollow. And what I mean by that is it's a story as old as time. Where you have some success and you maybe have good income and you have freedom and you have the American dream and you think you should be very happy and you're not. And you look at yourself and say, is this what life is about? I'm just here to try and make money and acquire possessions and just kind of get more and more and more. And I was empty.
And what I really found joy in was helping people and serving people. I just, that's what filled my cup and so wanted to do more of that. And I kind of found myself kind of being discontent in that entrepreneurial journey. And I'm a strong person of faith and prayed about it a lot and sought advice from other people and decided I think I can serve in a different way, maybe serve my community and what would that look like? And decided to run for the office of mayor, fully expecting to lose. If I'm being candid with you, had no background in this work. You know, I was a 30. What was I at that time? 39 year old digital marketing guy with no background in public service, but just a guy that was passionate about Sioux Falls. And I ran and I won. And so I've been doing this now for seven years. It's a term limited job.
I have about a year left in the office and it's been an absolute ride, man.
There's highs that are absolute highs and then there are days when it can't be over quick enough and everything in between. So it's been an honor and a privilege to be doing this work. But it's something that if you had said to me 10, 15 years ago, hey Paul, you're going to be the mayor of the largest city in the state for eight years, I would have probably laughed you out of the room.
[00:07:16] Tamlyn Shimizu: I love that story. One of the most interesting parts about my job is getting to hear everyone's backstories about how they came to their positions. And I've heard everything across the board.
I, I love people who have different backgrounds and then came into their position today. What do you think?
What do you think you've brought from your digital marketing career into your career as a mayor?
[00:07:40] Paul TenHaken: Well, I would say that for politicians in general. And I hate the word politician because it's a dirty word. I mean, you say politician today and you instantly cringe and people hate that word. And I do as well.
But being in politics and public service is sales and marketing because what you are doing is you are trying to sell an agenda, sell an idea, sell a vision and get people to come along. With you, you're trying to sell the community on. Hey, this is where we need to go. Hey, we need to do this new park project.
Hey, don't you agree we need to invest more in our roads? Hey, community, don't you think we need a better police force? And we need to put it's sales and so for it. For 10 years I did sales and marketing using digital mediums and using digital marketing to convince audiences, you know, to send their kids to this college or use this healthcare system or vote for this candidate using, you know, Twitter and MySpace and Facebook and email marketing and apps and websites. And so I've taken a lot of those same skills and strategies and then have used them in public service. And so a lot of what our job is as elected officials is making sure that we can one, cast a vision and two, get people to follow us in executing that vision. And they say, you know, as a quote, a leader without followers is just taking a walk. So if you don't have followers that are following you in that vision, you're not a leader. And so that's a big part of our job. I think the second piece that my entrepreneurial journey has really helped me with in this job is a term I use a lot. And that's what I call public entrepreneurship, where I've taken kind of an entrepreneurial mindset into the office of mayor, where I kind of push the envelope a lot and say, why do we do this this way and can't we be more effective if we tried something like this, or this makes no sense, or why are we spending money this way? And it's frustrating to me at times because I want to move really quickly. And as a guy who had his own company, I was used to being able to on a Monday say, hey, we're going to make this decision and by Friday it's in place.
And here on a Monday, I could say, let's make this decision and it's going to take four to six months before it could maybe be in place. And I got to make sure the city council agrees with it and does the community buy into it and can we even do it and do we have money for it and does the, do the people on Facebook care and are they pissed off and are they going to send me mad emails because they don't agree with it?
So it's a way different process, but some of the same entrepreneurial principles apply where I think communities and constituents and, you know, our residents, they want to see us as, as elected officials experiment more and act More like entrepreneurs. They're sick of politicians. At least they are in the US where that's why you've seen whether you agree with his policies or not, you've seen this, this Change Trump movement that's happened in the U.S.
the reason this has caught steam is because people are disenfranchised with politicians and career politicians, and they want to say, I want business people. I want people who have, you know, have signed the front of a paycheck, you know, and understand business and are going to come in and slash things and Elon Musk is going to come in and cut stuff. And yeah, we need this. And now I don't agree with all of it, and I don't agree with a lot of the style and the way that we're doing this right now on the federal level. But I think there's an appetite for that right now in our country. And I think that's why you're seeing more people get elected who have entrepreneurial or business background, because our constituents are hungry for that.
[00:11:38] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, it's a really good thought. To connect this. What do you think is a lot of our listeners are cities, mayors, some, but also, you know, practitioners working at city level.
What do you think? How can they embrace these principles of entrepreneurship to drive the change that they want?
[00:11:59] Paul TenHaken: I would say this, that residents would rather see us try and fail than not try at all. So I think we as elected leaders sometimes get too worried about, hey, what if we put an ordinance or a policy in place and it fails and then we look stupid?
Well, I would rather say on the front end, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna do this and get ready, residents, this may not work. So I'm gonna tell you on the front end, we're gonna try this, and this may not work, but we will learn from it. So we'll take whatever doesn't work and we will learn from that and we'll maybe tweak it. The alternative is we, we do nothing at all and do status quo. And we did that in Sioux Falls this past year where we've had a transit system that we have been running the same type of public transit for 20, 30 years. And it's just, it's been broken. I mean, we've only been covering a fraction of the city. We're using 30 foot long, you know, environmentally unfriendly buses with three people on it at a time.
It's just not fix routes. It just wasn't working.
And so we did an RFP and partnered with the new micro Transit partner that's doing this on demand transit system.
And on the front end, we told our residents, we're like, hey, we're going to move some cheese here. Like, there's going to be some growing pains with this.
And so get ready. This may not work. Okay. And even if it does work, there's going to be some hiccups and there's going to be some problems. But the alternative is we keep this wonky system that isn't working well at all. So what would you rather have? Do you want us to. You want us to be entrepreneurial and innovative and try some new things, or do you want us to just do status quo?
And 99% of people will say, yeah, we'd rather see us try something new than just stay status quo. And so we innovated. We, you know, we tried something new and it's. It's been a success. Has it had some warts and some issues? We've had to work through 100%, but by all accounts, it's been a much better system than we had previously. And that's because we set expectations on the front end that said, hey, this won't be perfect. Just get ready.
But it's going to be better than just sticking with what we've had.
[00:14:19] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah. That transparency and open communication about how you're going to innovate and do things, things differently is really imperative. Right. And I'm glad to hear that people have been really receptive to it because I think so often cities are really afraid to do that because it's tax dollars. Right. How are we spending your tax dollars? How can we really say that we fail at something, that we wasted your tax dollars and having that transparency to say, hey, we're learning from it. Hey, we might not get it right from the beginning, but we're learning along the way. And we're using still those. That money effectively in. In the long run, at least. So. Yeah.
[00:14:54] Paul TenHaken: And there's a balance, Tamlyn, between that where you, you're not reckless with tax dollars. Where you say, hey, let's just, let's just throw some money against the wall and see if this works, and if it doesn't, we'll try something else. I mean, you have to take that responsibility very seriously. This isn't your private corporate dollars. Like, like when I had my own company, we could experiment. And if it went totally south, that was my own money, my company's money, and my partner's money that we were experimenting with. This is not my money. This is the people's Dollars. And so your risk tolerance has to be lower in the public sector. But I think the public sector still accepts some level of risk tolerance. It's lower than it is in the private sector, but there still has to be some level of risk tolerance. And, you know, when I first got elected 2018, and I obviously came as an entrepreneur, then the question I was getting all the time was, hey, are you going to run City hall like a business? It's like, all right, we got a business guy in there. Are you going to run it like a business?
And I would answer them and say, well, in some ways, yeah. I mean, there's certainly business principles to apply to government, but in a lot of ways, no, because the goal of a business is, is to make money. Like, that's goal number one of a business is to make profit.
And that is not the goal of a city.
So the goal of City hall, my goal is not to make money.
And so when you see like an Elon Musk or, you know, someone like that who goes into government, who has an entrepreneurial, profit driven mindset, who goes into government and wants to just cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, and realize with a make money mindset, it's like, well, that's not the goal of government, is to make money. Now, there's efficiencies, yes.
And those, there's efficiencies in business and there's efficiencies in government. And those, of course, are aligned. But it's a totally different mindset you have to have with running a for profit company, a public sector government entity. They're just very, very different. And until you've lived in both spaces, I think it's very hard to understand that until you've kind of lived in there for several years on kind of each side of the fence.
[00:17:17] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely. I want to talk a little bit more about some of the projects and initiatives that you've been working on. So I heard about your 437, 437 project and your annual fitness challenges.
Can you talk about those and how your personal passions, with you mentioned faith, fitness, community, how has that shaped your approach as a mayor as well?
[00:17:42] Paul TenHaken: Well, I believe that physical health and physical fitness is one of the most important kind of facets of a community.
And it's something that the bully pulpit of the mayor has to be used for, because the physical health of our communities is directly tied to the resilience of a community. And in South Dakota, and I hate this about our state, but we are the 11th highest state in the country for Our obesity rates.
And in fact, 36, 37% of our state is considered obese.
So think about that. Over one third Tamlyn of our state is considered obese.
And obesity leads to hypertension and high blood pressure and heart disease and all kinds of joint issues. And it's just tied to so many things.
And so I have been passionate about trying to get the community healthy, but indirectly, physical health is so directly tied to your mental health.
[00:18:48] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah.
[00:18:48] Paul TenHaken: And during the COVID pandemic, and I have such a soft spot for any leader, specifically any mayor that had to be the mayor through the COVID pandemic, because we were in such impossible, impossible positions through the COVID 19 pandemic.
And what happened to people's mental health during that time cannot be overstated. And I saw people lose it. I mean, they lost their minds. That's the only way I can say it. I mean, they just. They lashed out, they became irrational.
They just really became unhinged on so many levels. And the study after study has shown that a stronger physical body also directly connected to a stronger mental health state of mind.
And so starting in 2020, April of 2020, we were all told that, hey, stay at home. Hey, don't go talk to anybody. Stay in your house. Don't have any physical interaction with people. What do you think that did to everyone's mind? I mean, that's why people just really started to lose it.
And so I started, at that time, the mayor's Fitness Challenge in April. And I said, hey, you need to get outside and start walking, start running, enjoy nature.
Like, you don't need to stay in your home.
You can go outside. You're not going to catch COVID by going on a run. You need to go get active because you need to shut off the news. You need to get off your phones. You need to put away the negativity and get out, because your minds are really degrading right now.
And that became a challenge of encouraging our residents to do a hundred miles of activity in a hundred days.
And people loved it because they were so hungry for something other than Covid at that time. And now we're in our fifth year of that challenge. And it's just. It's been a home run. We just kicked it off last weekend, and it's been great.
And then that. What spun out of that was a project called the 437 Project. There's. It's 437 miles across the state of South Dakota.
And I saw the mental health challenges across the state. Our Suicide rates started to climb after Covid and I saw the mental health struggles across the state, including in our agricultural community.
That's one you don't often hear a lot about. But the suicide rate amongst farmers and amongst our Native American population is much higher than the average population.
And so we started to run. Twelve of us, we hopped in two RVs and we ran 437 miles across the state to raise funds and awareness for mental health prevention and suicide prevention or mental health services and suicide prevention.
The funds went to an organization called the helpline, which supports 988, which is a crisis hotline. You can call 988 and get support for. If you're having suicidal ideations or you're having mental health challenges, you can call that. Just like you can call 911. You can call 988 and get help for those services. And so we're now in our fourth year of the 437 Project, where 12 people get together, they run across the entire state. 437 miles. And we raise about a quarter million dollars every year for this cause. And it's been absolutely a home run for the community. It's united our community around the topic of mental health. But just allowing people to talk about it kind of lifted the veil and that it's not something we have to be ashamed of. You can talk about your own mental health. If you have some suicidal thoughts or you're just feeling unwell, it's okay to let people know. It's okay to ask the question, hey, Tamlyn, are you having thoughts of self harm? Are you having a rough day? Do you need to talk to someone? It's okay to have those thoughts, but make sure you're seeking help. And so we're raising the awareness that people can seek help. And here's the resources you have to go to for that.
[00:23:06] Tamlyn Shimizu: Amazing. How many days does that take to do the 437 miles?
[00:23:12] Paul TenHaken: Yeah, it only takes about 72 hours.
Yeah, we run non stop relay style, so there's only one runner at a time. But we just keep running non stop. So we carry a baton and we just keep passing it off to one another.
[00:23:27] Tamlyn Shimizu: Okay, very nice.
[00:23:28] Paul TenHaken: We keep going non stop across the whole state. My goal, my dream would be to have one of these in every single state. So, you know, in Montana it's the 564 project. And then Iowa would be the 384 project or whatever the mileage is across the state so that all 50 states would have something like this to Raise awareness and dollars for suicide prevention and mental health awareness.
[00:23:52] Tamlyn Shimizu: I'm from Colorado originally. I feel like that would get a lot of support in Colorado because there's a lot of really avid runners as, you know, not actually as. As many issues with obesity there because it's a very, very active state. But still, of course, the mental health challenges are everywhere, right?
[00:24:10] Paul TenHaken: So, yeah, it's a huge issue. Mental health challenges.
I tell you what I've seen as a mayor, what I've seen as a huge rising issue is two primary areas.
Addiction issues related to not only alcohol, but, but drugs. I mean, I've seen addiction issues really rise since COVID and I've seen mental health issues really rise since COVID and we spend a lot of time in our communities as mayors dealing with the side effects of that.
We deal with a lot of homeless issues as mayors and 95% of all homelessness issues. I mean, if you go into a shelter today and you talk to the people who are experiencing homelessness, 95% of those people, I'm making this up, but very likely have one or both of those issues as, you know, underlying causes of their homelessness at some point, either a mental health challenge or an addiction challenge that led to them being in that situation that they're in.
[00:25:18] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely.
I want to talk a little bit more on the podcast. We often talk about, you know, public private partnerships as a key for. For growth for cities, of course.
However, also, there's a balance, right.
Some critics worry that too much reliance on private entities can lead to uneven development or reduced accountability. Also for public sector. How do you strike this balance and ensure that these partnerships really serve the public interest long term?
[00:25:51] Paul TenHaken: Yeah, it's a, it's a great question. I think the latter part of your statement there on over reliance on public partnerships, public private partnerships, we really haven't seen that yet in, in Sioux Falls or in South Dakota. We rely heavily, though, on the philanthropic community here in Sioux Falls to supplement what we're doing in government, primarily because we have a very, very low tax state. And so because we have. We're in such a low tax state and low tax city, we need private sector support in order to keep the city humming.
We have no state income tax. We have no corporate income tax.
We have a 6.2% sales tax, and then we have property tax. So property tax and a 6.2% sales tax are our two sources of income. That's it.
And so we don't have a large tax space.
And so as an example, I was just at an event this week where we're opening up a new park. It's an $18 million park. It's an ice ribbon and a splash pad and a handicap accessible playground and a dog park. It's a really cool project, an $18 million project, but the city did not have money for. We couldn't have done this, but we had $9 million in private money from three different donors that wanted this to get done.
And so the city matched that. We did have 9 million that we could scrape together. But we no way we would have been able to come up with, with 18 million.
Our city is sprinkled all over with, with examples like that, that but for private sector developments and private sector partnerships, we would not have the community we have.
And so they're very, very critical to, at least in Sioux Falls, to the city that we Enjoy today, these P3 developments. Now can there be an over reliance on them? There can be. And we have, we have a single philanthropist in our community, a gentleman named T. Denny Sanford, who started a credit card business here in Sioux Falls many, many years ago and has, I won't even dare to guess the number, but it's been over a billion dollars that he has invested into this community.
And if people would ask me, hey Paul, what's been the single biggest driving force to Sioux Falls kind of thriving and success over the years, Boy, I'd have to say T. Denny Sanford's gifts back to this community would be near the top of the list, if not at the top of the list. So you also have to wonder what happens when people like that are no longer there to provide that support? Is there an over reliance that the community has sometimes to your point on that too. So I think about that.
What do we do when T. Denny Sanford no longer does provide these 10, 20, 50 million dollar gifts to our community? Have we over relied on his incredible generosity?
So I do think about that a lot and make sure that we're not over relying on that. But you also can't say to a donor, hey, we want to give you a $20 million gift for this park. And we say, you know what, we're going to turn that down because we don't want to over rely on you in our community.
It's hard to pass that up as well.
[00:29:18] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely.
What do you think in Sioux Falls? What challenges are you really tackling? What are the biggest challenges in the city and how are you tackling this?
[00:29:31] Paul TenHaken: 100%. The biggest challenge right now that we are facing is the challenges that are coming with the just meteoric growth that we're experiencing, you know, keeping up with 2 to 3% growth a year is really hard.
It's exciting to a lot of people. Whether if you know, if it's the chamber of commerce and, you know, those people, they get excited, excited about growth. I get really nervous about it. That's. It's housing needs, it's workforce, it's wastewater, it's water needs, it's more cops, it's schools. It's the challenges to keep up with that in that very limited tax base that I just mentioned, as well as we're living in an environment where the costs of building of, you know, when we talk about tariffs and all these things that are just really escalating the price of anything.
So if we add, you know, when we're adding five to 6,000 people a year, Tamlyn, and we have to build a fire station, you know, every three to four years, a fire station that we built five years ago for 3.6 million, that same fire station today is almost twice as expensive. And it's the exact same fire station, exact same bricks, exact same size, exact same everything.
So trying to keep up with that, that growth when inflation and material costs and interest rates and all this is going up at such a meteoric rate is really, really stressful. So that, by far, is our biggest challenge right now.
[00:31:08] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, makes a lot of sense. And a challenge that many cities can relate to, obviously, as well. If you could kind of wave a magic wand and fix that problem, let's say not fix it as in, oh, that we just stopped the growth, but fix it the other way around, the growth is going to happen.
What. What would it be? Would it be money that would fix it? What. What would fix those challenges from your perspective?
[00:31:32] Paul TenHaken: Boy, really, really great question.
I think if I could wave a magic wand and fix one thing, I would like love to get a solution to the affordable housing challenge, which I think indirectly then fixes a lot of the other issues that continues to be. I know it's a problem in Europe. I know it's a problem in the States. You know, pick any major city in the country. I know you're in Stuttgart. I'm in, you know, Sioux Falls, Sacramento, Tallahassee, New York.
Getting people into affordable housing. Housing, whether that's multifamily, whether that's single family, is the number one challenge we're all facing as leaders.
And once you can do that, if their housing is affordable, then they have money to afford daycare, then they have money to afford their food. Which is rising. They have money for those other critical needs.
But housing is your first priority. If you don't have a place to live that's affordable, that's your number one priority priority. And when you worry about that, nothing else really matters that has to be covered first. So if I could wave a magic wand and fix that, a lot of other things would take care of itself.
[00:32:43] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, makes, makes a lot of sense. As you mentioned, we're, we're having this issue in so many different cities. Our, our second largest office is in Barcelona and this is a huge priority, obviously very large. Increasing housing prices with very low salary as well is one of the driving factors of a lot of protests going on. Of course, it's a challenge that we're talking about a lot. So love to exchange with you more also on that topic afterwards.
I would love to also talk a little bit more about leadership. I like this topic a lot with the mayors.
So hindsight is 20 20, of course.
So you've been mayor now for seven years. Right.
And I'm sure that you would do things differently or make some different decisions if you could go back. Would you like to share maybe a decision or something that you did in the last seven years that you would do differently now?
[00:33:44] Paul TenHaken: Oh, so many. We don't have enough time.
Is this a four hour show?
I think you talk about leadership. Good leaders are very willing and open to admitting when they get things wrong. And I've gotten a boatload of things wrong over the years. But I think with the information that I have now about the pandemic, I certainly would have made some different decisions during that time.
Even though we didn't shut down businesses and we didn't, schools never even closed in our communities. And I saw some cities and states that made some really drastic decisions and they're still dealing with the impacts of that.
I think even though our restrictions were quite light in the state of South Dakota, they were really light in the state.
I would have even been even lighter in Sioux Falls because what I know now is that the COVID 19 virus, if you are a person with compromised immune system, you are at risk. And those are the people we really should have been focused on instead of the entirety of the community and saying, schools you need to do this and businesses you need to do this, when in hindsight, you really weren't the people we needed to worry about. It was the people who had, you know, maybe cancer in their background or, or the senior citizens or the people that were really, really at high risk of if they Contracted Covid, they would be in a bad, bad place. And so I would have made some decisions very differently from that standpoint based on what I know now in some of the ordinances or some of the discussions we had on what we would have done or not have done at that point.
[00:35:36] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely, I think.
So your point is about using more resources essentially to protect the most vulnerable, instead of shutting down it for everyone, for.
For those.
It's hard without the proper data. Right. And as we're a smart city podcast, we talk a lot about data.
And I'm just wondering, it came to my mind while you were speaking.
What data do you think is most useful for you as a leader and that you use on a regular basis?
[00:36:13] Paul TenHaken: The data that's most useful to me is reliable data.
Good data, good data. And sometimes it's hard for me to get good data.
I get a lot of data. But I question, is this good data? Let me give you an example for homelessness, which is an issue in Sioux Falls. It's an issue in every city that we have in the country that's growing.
We do what's called a point in time count every year where people go out in January, you get an army of volunteers, they go out one night in January and they literally try and count how many homeless people we have in our community.
They go to the shelters and they count them. They go out in the woods, under the bridges, they try and find them and they say, are you homeless right now? And the people say yes or no and they count them. And then that is our. The number that we say, this is how many homeless we have in Sioux Falls.
Tamlyn, does that sound like a good data point to use to?
[00:37:19] Tamlyn Shimizu: Probably not the most reliable.
[00:37:20] Paul TenHaken: Yeah, it's terrible. But that's the only way to do it.
So. So when we say what kind of data do I use? And people say, well, how many homeless do we have in Store Falls? I said, well, our point in time count says we have 625.
But I hardly even can say that number out loud because I think it's crap data. Like, I don't know.
So I don't like to use that number because I don't even know how many kids do we have in our community that are coming from broken single parent homes that need a mentor? I don't know. School districts will maybe tell me some data, but I don't know what's going on in the their home. Like, I need good data. If I had that data, it would really tell me with some Predictive information that I would know about some crime issues that we may be having in three or four or five years based on the broken homes that I have today.
So data that gives me predictive analytics on what may happen down the road is really. That's the gold data, you know, versus here's the, here's the data that's telling me what, what is happening today. Like, for instance, if I get a number of, hey, we had 12 homicides last year. Great.
That tell me. That tells me how many homicides we have. What I want to know is what's the data today that will tell me how many we're probably going to have next year?
That predictive data that will tell me what's the leading indicators that are most likely to lead to a homicide. That's the real gold three can prevent those sort of things from ever even happening.
[00:38:50] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. Absolutely.
You have one year left, right? As mayor in your term, what is your main goal of what you want to accomplish in the next year?
[00:39:04] Paul TenHaken: Well, you know, you know, the last year, I think in any office for an elected official is, is twofold. One is you need to make sure that you finish what you started. Right. And so that you wrap up key projects. We have some large infrastructure projects that we got to get completed.
We have some big budgetary headwinds we're facing right now. And so we just have some budget challenges that we have to work through. And I know that doesn't sound exciting, but that's part of the, of the job. I know some people will ask this and be like, oh, you got any big projects you want to start? The last year is not when you start big projects. The last year is when you try and land the plane. Right?
[00:39:49] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah.
[00:39:50] Paul TenHaken: The other thing that you try and do is you don't want to leave your successor with any huge challenges. You want to kind of give them a clean slate so that they can take their agenda and their priorities and move the city forward. And I'm really committed to that, to making sure I don't give my successor any, any major problems.
So I want to make sure they have a, a fully staffed police force and no major lawsuits that are, they're going to be, you know, handed when they come into office and. No.
[00:40:24] Tamlyn Shimizu: Very kind community.
[00:40:26] Paul TenHaken: Yeah. Yeah, hopefully.
And so the theme with my team this year is no unforced errors. Meaning, hey, no unforced errors this year. Let's not screw up anything big. Let's. Let's land this plane. Well, let's not Crash it on the, on the Runway as we're driving it into the, in, you know, into the hangar. Let's land it. Well, so that the next mayor can board the passengers and take off.
[00:40:53] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, I love it and I like how you're, you're coming committed to, to landing the plane. What do you think about Sioux Falls? You're very passionate about the city. What do you think is your dream version of the city in say, 2050, so in, in about 20 years?
[00:41:11] Paul TenHaken: Well, I think my dream version would be smart sustainable growth. You know, we are going to keep growing. That's just going to be inevitable.
I want it to be smart growth and manageable growth.
My worry is that the growth gets unmanageable.
We have a reputation of being a great city and that is a double edged sword.
So when you are a great city, you attract a lot of people quickly. And that's happening to us right now.
And you've seen other cities around the world that have got that reputation, then they attract a lot of people and then they become a not so great city because they attracted too many people too quickly or they maybe attracted the wrong type of people too quickly. And now they're dealing with all the challenges of that. So I think I want to avoid, you know, growing too fast too quickly. So I think continuing just smart steady growth is 1. And I think by 2050, I would also like, say, and this is very specific, but I would like to see our crime per capita stay steady.
So I think when your crime rate stays consistent and your community safety stays consistent, you have a good community. When your crime rate grows, it's very indicative of the type of community you have. And our crime per capita has stayed very steady over the last decade. Now we have more crime because we have more people, but per capita it's steady.
So that's a very important metric to me and I watch it like a hawk because if that per capita number is ticking up, we have a crime problem.
And in fact, last year was our lowest per capita crime year since Pre Covid.
So I'm very proud of that. It was actually our safest year since 2019.
But the community will say, oh, it seems like we have more crime. Well, we do because we're the biggest we've ever been. I mean, we're growing, but we have more everything. We have more toilets flushing, we have more stoplights, we have more of everything.
And so I think that's the other thing. By 2050, if we keep that crime per capita number steady, that will mean we still Have a great city because a lot of metrics flow out of that from there.
[00:43:30] Tamlyn Shimizu: Really good vision. I like it. Now I come to the part where I ask you, did we miss anything? I like to give you the open floor, if you'd like it, to talk about any topic that you think, oh, we didn't touch on that, but that's really important for the listeners to know. Would you like to take the open floor?
[00:43:49] Paul TenHaken: You know, I think that this is, this is a, this is a great interview. And I obviously love talking about my city. I love talking about being a mayor, and I love talking about leadership. I will say this.
We're in a time when we need more men and women that are willing to step up into leadership roles in public service, that are willing to do this work for no other reason than the love and the passion for their communities and their people.
And we're getting fewer and fewer people that are willing to, to do that, at least here in the states. What I'm seeing more of, Tamlyn, is a lot of agenda driven campaigns and agenda driven candidates that, you know, they may be a run on a single issue, they're passionate about this specific topic and so they're mad about this. So I'm going to run on this issue or this topic. And that's what politics is. That's not what being a mayor is. A mayor is a passion for a community.
And you have to understand that you are representing all people, all religions, all backgrounds, all socioeconomic classes. It's not a career, it's a chapter in life.
Be brief, be great, be gone, get in, serve your community, get out, send the elevator back down, land the plane and, you know, leave it well for someone else. And so I just always love to encourage people. If you're thinking about doing this, you know, I'm a graphic designer, web designer by background. You don't need to be a politician, you don't need to be a lawyer by background to serve your community.
If you had a stirring in your heart, the number one quality you need to be good in elected office is you need a passion, a serve people.
If you got a passion to serve people and to love on people, that will make you a great elected official. You can learn everything else, but you can't learn how to be passionate about people and to love people. You either have that or you don't. If you have that, you'll be great in elected office.
[00:46:00] Tamlyn Shimizu: I love that. You almost made me want to run for mayor now. That was very inspiring. So thank you so much, Paul, and I really love that. With that, we get to go into our fun segment.
So I hope you're ready because the segment that we chose for you today is actually my favorite segment.
And actually I don't think we've done it very much in the last few episodes. So I'm excited to do it with you today. It's called Roll with the punches. It's when you answer this or that, questions quickly and with your first instincts.
And then we'll just run through it very quickly. And then at the end, if you want to explain any of your answers, you can do so.
Sound good?
[00:46:39] Paul TenHaken: I love it. Yeah.
[00:46:40] Tamlyn Shimizu: All right, let's go.
Coffee or tea?
[00:46:44] Paul TenHaken: Neither.
[00:46:46] Tamlyn Shimizu: Standing desk or walking? Meetings?
[00:46:49] Paul TenHaken: Standing desk.
[00:46:51] Tamlyn Shimizu: Social impact or economic growth?
[00:46:54] Paul TenHaken: Economic growth.
[00:46:55] Tamlyn Shimizu: Data driven decisions or intuition based leadership?
[00:46:59] Paul TenHaken: Data driven. All day.
[00:47:01] Tamlyn Shimizu: Pilot project or full scale implementation?
[00:47:05] Paul TenHaken: Pilot project.
[00:47:06] Tamlyn Shimizu: Public funding or private investment?
[00:47:09] Paul TenHaken: Private investment.
[00:47:11] Tamlyn Shimizu: Disruptive change or adaptive change?
[00:47:14] Paul TenHaken: Disruptive change.
[00:47:16] Tamlyn Shimizu: Entrepreneurial mindset or public servant heart?
[00:47:20] Paul TenHaken: Entrepreneurial mindset, baby.
[00:47:23] Tamlyn Shimizu: All right, there you go. Do you want to explain any of your interviews?
[00:47:26] Paul TenHaken: Well, you can tell by that I mean based on our interview with. Probably not. Surprise. I'm an entrepreneur by background. I love when the private sector jumps in and says, hey, we're not going to wait for the government to do this. We're going to. We're going to get involved. And that's, you know, a lot of times my big beef with the community is they'll say, I'll give you an example. Give you a real example, Tam. Yesterday a guy reached out to me. He sent me a text. He's a very great guy in our community. And he said, hey, we have this road in Sioux Falls. It's called Veterans Park Parkway. And why don't we put up a bunch of flag poles along Veterans Parkway to like, honor our vets and our community. It'd be a really great thing and great initiative.
And I said, yeah, great idea. Go find a sponsor and make it happen.
We don't. Don't wait for the government to do it.
It's probably 5 to $7,000. A flagpole. You want 80 flag poles to line this parkway. You know, that's a half a million dollars. We don't have money for that. So private sponsorship. Go do it.
I love it when it's like you want to make it happen. Great. We don't have the money for that, but go do it. So that's kind of my philosophy.
[00:48:37] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, I like your philosophy. I think, of course, they're meant to be. Tough questions. Right where I think you Also have a public servant heart from what you were saying before, as well as your entrepreneurial mindset. So I think those go really well together. Together with your leadership, of course.
[00:48:55] Paul TenHaken: For sure. For sure.
[00:48:57] Tamlyn Shimizu: Last question.
It's a question we ask every single guest. It's to you, what is a smart city?
[00:49:06] Paul TenHaken: You know, a smart city, a lot of times when we hear that term today, we think about technology. I mean, we go right to technology and connectivity and all that. And I think that very much is a big part of a modern smart city that's adapting to the technological landscape and is using technology to deliver services in a more efficient way to their residents. So I think that's part of it.
But I also think it's a city that listens to its residents in a way that ensures that everyone's voice is heard and everyone's being included in decisions, and which is increasingly difficult in a time where there's no easy way to get feedback from residents to ensure how they want services delivered. It used to be, you know, focus groups or you'd meet at the library and have people show up. They don't do that anymore. It used to be surveys online. They don't do that anymore. So getting people's feedback is very hard.
But you can't deliver services to people in a smart way until you know how they want the services delivered and what the people want. So it kind of goes hand in glove and so chicken and egg. You first have to find out what people want and how they want it delivered. And once you do that, then you deliver it in a smart, efficient, affordable way to the user. So as a guy who has a background in of terms technology, anytime I can use technology to save the taxpayer money, make things more efficient and deliver it in a more cost effective way. I love doing it, but also realizing not everyone is on the technology train to the same level that I may be.
So you still have to ensure these services are accessible to everyone, no matter their level of knowledge and usability that they may have with their platform. So that's a long definition, but just advancing with the times and making sure technology is a big part of your platform and how you're delivering services.
[00:51:12] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, very good. Listen and deliver.
[00:51:15] Paul TenHaken: So with that listen and deliver, I love that.
[00:51:17] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, listen and deliver. That can be the motto.
But actually there was so much in that episode to unpack and to really listen and to learn from.
So thank you so much for your time. I know it was really valuable for our listeners. Also very valuable for me to learn from you and be able to talk to you today. So thank you so much.
[00:51:39] Paul TenHaken: Thank you. Tamlyn Loved being on. Appreciate you.
[00:51:42] Tamlyn Shimizu: Appreciate you as well. So thank you also to all of our listeners. It wouldn't happen without you either. So don't forget you can always create a free Account on BABLESmartCities EU and you can find out more about projects and solutions, implementations and more. Thank you very much.
