Last night at the SF City Council meeting, councilor Staggers was attacked for his stance against the ‘recovery zone’ resolution (fast forward to item #10).
StormLand TV had a great story about the resolution before the vote. Now watch the meeting carefully, and don’t get caught up when Costello talks about ‘saving money’ or when Staggers talks about ‘pork barrel’ spending. The best points to come out of the argument are clear 1) Other communities are more deserving of this money 2) Taxpayers are not really saving any money. The second exchange is the best, Staggers says this in response to Costello’s assumption that he is saving taxpayers $2 million dollars (paraphrasing);
“You are saving the city $2 million, not the taxpayer.  Are you going to give that money back to the taxpayer? No. Because see the city will just spend that money on something else.”
But then Costello goes into a rant about how we will build roads with it and reveals the city is $137 million behind on road maintenance. Gee, I fucking wonder why? Because over the last 8 years we have blown record tax revenue receipts on stupid projects instead the streets. And Kermit’s point is well taken. We save the city $2 million that will ultimately be blown on something else besides streets. SF city government has a proven record of doing just that.
One funny part in the exchange was when Pat was separating the city accounts (1st Penny, 2nd Penny and property taxes) then says (paraphrasing);
“Yeah, I know the money all comes from the same place, but . . .”
That’s right Pat, taxpayers don’t care if you have 3 accounts or 20 accounts, they are the ones putting money into those accounts.
It was truly a sad day when fellow councilors attacked another councilor for trying to protect the reputation of Sioux Falls. Pathetic.
Apparently, Staggers speaks for the citizens. At least 2 on the council are part of the bid rigging corruption. The others are zombies who follow as extras. Hardly a month ago, the city denied an economic downturn. Now, this is an economic recovery zone. You don’t fool citizens but you may fool the feds.
They didn’t fool the feds though, the feds fooled them. They SHOULD HAVE NEVER VOTED FOR THE LEVY BOND! The feds suckered them to pay for their project, that and Munson just couldn’t go by the FEDS timeline, because his big bucks retailer buddies were bitching about flood insurance. Every single councilor, including Staggers voted to subsidize the Feds, now they are paying for it, by having to admit they are poor kids.
I think King Munson uses Home Rule to keep the council uninformed and sidelined. Only he knows whether the city has a healthy economy or needs help. Politicians have 2 faces. One is truthful and the opposite lies. There’s no distinction when both sides are played at the same time.
If you watch the KELO video, Munson goes on his flood insurance rant again, and is concerned about saving people (retailers) money on insurance. How, ironic, considering when 187 basements had sewage backed into them in 2004 because of city incompetence Munson wasn’t cheerleading that they get any money to cleanup their basements, I guess that doesn’t count as ‘recovery’.
Citizens can buy federal flood insurance at a good price but retailers (business) cannot. Munson looks out for special interests. In this case, he has a point. Commercial areas should be protected. They are a valuable sales tax source. However, I think flood control should be and (most often) is a federal function. It’s a big budget burden and never properly engineered when local government manages it. Doesn’t matter how high the levees are if there’s weakness upstream. Water would travel on both sides of these high levees by the time it reaches Sioux Falls.
I agree, the feds should be paying for and handling the project.