Sioux Falls City Council Agenda, Sep 19, 2017

INFORMATIONAL MEETING • 4 PM

The fun starts at the informational meeting with little to go on because there is NO attached documents. That’s because our super transparent government can’t share until the big reveal.

The three topics are actually pretty interesting, because some good discussion could be had.

On the August financial report, one could ask about the financial impact of the Soccer tournament (from June) and besides a bump in hotel BID taxes, there wasn’t much of an impact (CVB predicted $17 million), I calculated about a $4.3 million dollar economic impact, but if you compare from the year before, it was about a $2 million dollar impact.

Speaking of the BID, head of the CVB will be talking about their BID Tax budget for 2018. Wonder if any councilors will ask about what happened to the Mayor’s committee on changing the BID tax? Oh, that’s right, he was told to go to H—.

The new building inspector will be in attendance to talk about his new role. I find it ironic that the building services department constantly says they are understaffed even though they have had thousand$ in software upgrades, a previous director who spent more time at a local watering hole than in his office and a planning department that has put a director and two staffers (paid by taxpayers) to help SELL the $4.4 million dollar TIF to the city council for a private developer.

REGULAR COUNCIL MEETING • 7 PM

The regular council meeting is going to be a longgggggg one. Let’s preview;

Item#1, Approval of Contracts. For some strange reason the city is buying $600K in property from Sweetman for the water department. We also find out the city contracts about $195K for outside cleaning services.

Item#2, Approval of Change orders. The beer coolers at The Denty are costing us another $32K.

Item#12, Protest Petition for Lacey Estate. Not sure how this will go, but expect lots of testimony.

Item#33, 2nd Reading. Property Tax Increase.

Item#34, 2nd Reading. Re-Finance on Bonds for Lewis & Clark.

Item#38, 2nd Reading. Lloyd Companies TIF. This one is sticky, because most of the council supports this. There has also been a question about whether or not councilor Selberg should vote on this due to his conflict of interest with being an independent broker for Lloyd. We will see if he decides to excuse himself. He has in the past on other Lloyd decisions.

Item #39, 1st Reading;

(a) No malt beverage retailer license shall be issued in the same building as an on-sale license or an off-sale license or another malt beverage retailer license, unless the licenses are intended for use by the same licensee and licenses issued are for the same licensed premise (or legal description) or there is provided

This one may apply to multiple casinos in the same building.

Item#51, 1st Reading. Changing the Design Standards of the DT PUD district.

Item#52, Final Budget hearings. Expect to hear some amendments.

Item#53, Bid Tax Budget for CVB.

Item#55-56, Resolution to form TIF for Lloyd companies, they waste no time considering the council will approve it the same night on #38.

Item#58. Permanent Easement for Arc of dreams (even though it was signed by the mayor a year before quietly in the night with the city clerk as witness).

Item#61. Resolution. 85th Street Pre-Annexation agreement. Yup, one item before the end of the meeting is a great time to submit an agreement that could cost the taxpayers of Sioux Falls over $30 million dollars.

*Recently at a OLLI (Osher Lifelong Living Institute) class, the Mayor was the guest to talk about city government. He told the class attendees that the council needs to ‘Stop listening to the minority voices.’ He was probably talking about the minority voice councilors like Starr and Stehly, but he also could have been referring to the CAVE people who show up to public input. Not sure, I wasn’t there, but found the commentary interesting considering the minority voices over the past two years have the best ideas for our city, that the mayor just vetoes.