A Bigger Table

I am not running to join an insider club. I am running because too many people in this city watch its growth happen and wonder if it is actually happening for them. That needs to change.

When I was nine years old, I sat across from a landlord and helped my parents negotiate a lease they couldn't sign without me.

They didn't ask me because I had special training. They asked me because someone had to close the gap, and I was the one who could.

I have been closing that gap my entire life.

Who the system was built for.

I know what it feels like when the process was designed for someone else. When the language is technical, the timeline is unclear, and nobody explained the rules before the deadline passed.

My parents built something real in this city. They came as refugees, my dad worked the lines at Morrell's, and they opened the first Vietnamese restaurant in Sioux Falls. They didn't wait for an invitation. They created their own.

But they also ran into walls that other business owners didn't. Walls made of paperwork, process, and systems that assumed everyone already knew how they worked.

A lot of families in Sioux Falls are running into those same walls today. They shouldn't have to.

The seat and the chair.

The people who had to earn their seat at the table are always the first ones to pull out a chair for someone else.

That is not just a sentiment. It is a leadership approach.

When you grow up translating for your parents and building bridges between cultures, you learn quickly that nothing is handed to you. You also learn that the best decisions come from more voices in the room. Not fewer. More.

Right now, too many people in Sioux Falls feel like outsiders in their own city. They watch incredible growth happening around them — new developments, new businesses, new energy — and they wonder if City Hall is actually listening to their neighborhood. To their family. To their needs.

That gap is real. And I am running to close it.

What a bigger table actually looks like.

It looks like plain-language, multilingual city communications so every resident can understand what their government is doing and weigh in before the window closes.

It looks like a small business navigator that walks a first-time entrepreneur through the permit process without needing a lawyer to get started.

It looks like neighborhood investments in every quadrant of this city. Sidewalks. Crossings. Parks. Basic things that tell a family: this place was built for you, too.

It looks like community conversations that bring City Hall to the neighborhoods instead of always asking neighborhoods to come downtown.

And it looks like an active, connected network of neighborhood associations — not just names on a list, but a real bridge between residents and the decisions being made about where they live. Sioux Falls has 21 of them. Right now, only a fraction of them have a consistent seat at the table. That needs to change.

Building consensus, not handing down decisions.

True leadership is not top-down. It is built on collaboration. On listening before speaking. On earning trust before asking for anything in return.

That is what this campaign has been from the beginning. And that is exactly what I will bring to every budget conversation, every permit decision, and every vote on council.

A bigger table does not mean a weaker city. It means a stronger one. More voices mean better questions. Better questions mean better choices. Better choices mean a Sioux Falls that actually works for all of us.

That is the city I grew up believing in. That is the city I am still fighting for.

It's always been our city, and now is our moment.

Let's rise together. ☀️

— Vince Danh
Candidate, Sioux Falls City Council At-Large | Runoff June 23, 2026