A Place for You
Today at Downtown Rotary, before the ninety-second timers and the policy questions, each candidate was handed a children's book. The ask was simple: write a message for a local school. Something a kid in this city might carry with them. I wrote: "Remember that there is always a place for you and your dreams. You can do it." Then the forum started. And everything that followed felt like an explanation of why I meant it.
They Didn't Know
In 2016, my parents walked out the back of their restaurant and found the parking lot torn up. No notice. No heads-up. Just construction.
They'd built something real — a restaurant Sioux Falls had welcomed, a place where our family put down roots. And they found out about a city project the same way a stranger would have: by walking outside and seeing it.
I brought that story up in my closing statement today. Not to relitigate 2016, but because of what happened next. We appealed to the council. Councilman Greg Nietzert got involved. The Argus Leader picked it up. The city created wayfinding signs for businesses affected by construction — a standard that still exists today.
The system worked. But only because we knew to push. Because I could speak English and navigate the process. My parents couldn't have done that on their own.
Not every family can. And that's the whole problem.
Transparency Is a Communication Problem
Every question at today's forum circled back to the same idea: how does the city actually reach the people it serves?
My answer was consistent. Transparency isn't just about making information available. It's about building infrastructure so people receive it in time to show up, not after the fact.
I talked about evolving the city's app into something closer to a subscription platform. You choose what matters — your neighborhood association, a road project near your kids' school, an upcoming park board vote — and you get notified when something is moving. Most residents aren't plugged in not because they don't care, but because the city hasn't made it easy. That changes the moment we build tools like they're actually for them.
That same logic applies to the budget, to development proposals, to everything in between.
On TIFs and Who Bears the Risk
The forum got into Tax Increment Financing. Here's where I stand.
Think of it like a Menard's rebate. A developer improves a property, the value goes up, and the new tax revenue that improvement generates repays a loan the developer took out — not existing taxpayer dollars. The city doesn't bond. The public isn't on the hook if the project fails. The developer is.
Smithfield provided real, dignified job pathways for immigrant families in this city, including families like mine. Competing for employers like that, and planning wisely for what comes after, requires tools. The question isn't whether to use TIFs. It's whether we use them with accountability and make sure developers carry the risk.
We can. We should.
The Site of a Generation
The Smithfield site is the biggest downtown redevelopment opportunity Sioux Falls has seen in a long time. Cleanup takes five to seven years. We have time, if we use it well.
Council's job isn't to pick the winners. It's to build the table.
That means real meeting spaces where newcomers and long-time residents shape what comes next together. Not a public comment period at the end of a process that's already been decided. The people who live near that site deserve a seat at the beginning, not an update when there's something to announce.
We should plant trees here whose shade the next generation enjoys. And we should make sure the people of this city are in the room when we decide what to plant.
Remember
Before I left today, I thought about that children's book again.
The kid who receives it won't know anything about TIF financing or strong-mayor government. They'll just read a message from a stranger who showed up at a lunch meeting and was asked to say something true.
“There is always a place for you and your dreams. You can do it.”
That's not a slogan. It's a standard. And right now, it isn't true for every family in this city. Not for the parents who find the parking lot torn up without notice. Not for the neighbors who hear about the vote after it's over. Not for the kid whose family arrived last year and hasn't found the right door yet.
That's what I'm running to change.
It's always been our city, and now is our moment.
Let's rise together.
— Vince Danh
Candidate, Sioux Falls City Council At-Large | June 2nd, 2026