You may have missed this item last week at the city council meeting, buried as an item at the end of a 3+Hour meeting.
FULL DOC: 85-th-pre-annex.pdf
As you can see, city taxpayers are paying for OVER half of the proposed upgrades. If you also include the SF residents that live in Lincoln County, you will see even more of Sioux Falls residents tax money going towards this project. Notice the State DOT is giving practically nothing, and the other neighbor that will benefit quite a bit from the project, Tea, is throwing in only $4.5 million. And as usual, the developers involved are contributing very little, even though they have the most to gain from the project. So why does the city continue to expand (annexation) like Flopdation Park and this project, when we are struggling to keep up with our current infrastructure? Sioux Falls should be dedicating that $30 million towards redeveloping our core and central part of the city instead of building interstate exchanges for rich developers in the middle of a swamp.
FF 3:29:00
Very suspicious. Paying for most of the project could be a way to steer the project into Huether contractors who tender him consideration (favors and/or monetary).
The City’s role in this is to expedite the project for completion in advance of that which would be the usual turtle-pace schedule if the State DOT were to provide more financing.
The City and Lincoln County will say this is in the interest of increasing taxable value of vacant land along I-29. But their actions to expedite this are also at the behest and benefit to unlock added value of that land for the landowners – who are taking the rather unprecedented action to contribute $4 million to a public highway interchange.
Guy, I would agree with you 100% ‘IF’ we really needed to expand to that area. We don’t. As I have mentioned. Besides Flopdation Park, there are acres and acres of undeveloped annexed land already in SF, not to mention all of the land that could be redeveloped in SF (Mainly around the Events Center).
Just another handout to greedy developers that want to build on cheap farmland.
The land around that potential interchange hasn’t been “cheap” farmland for at least 4 decades. Speculative pricing started waaaayyy back. This reminds me a bit of an “anti-immigrant” sounding argument. Take care of what (who’s) here first – etc.
LOL. Ruf, you are really stretching it. Comparing swampland to immigrants and refugees. Have you had your morning cup of coffee yet?
My point is simple, the more the city expands with new annexation, the more we have to take care of. Like I said, we have hundreds of acres already within city limits that needs development.
Not all land is suitable for all types of development – hence – geographic zoning. Not all land geographically suitable for development is financially feasible for the type pf development it WILL support – thus – sporadic undeveloped areas. The move toward a more (but not totally) form-based style of zoning (Shape Places) vs. the old use-based codes is a step in the right direction, but still leaves gaps.
Then lets fix the gaps.
Gaps are there because of economic viability. You don’t build a new commercial facility and expect it to succeed where there is not enough population (residential units). Commercial development doesn’t LEAD – it FOLLOWS.