As I mentioned a few days ago, Nelson Park’s green space north of the pool is now the new drinking hangout. If you stroll thru the park you will see clothes in the trees, empty food and beer containers, people passed out or drinking. This is why they put the banner on the pool fence.
Also, you can apparently do your laundry under the Arc of Dreams in the Big Sioux. And yes, this lady was washing her clothes in the river. I heard the E-Coli gets out stains.
I find it interesting the consultant said it was a bad location. So why did the city try to build an indoor pool there twice? Why? Because they WANTED to!
So what do most people do if they are in a hurry? They say ‘F’ck it’ and move on. If someone is in a hurry and they find a parking spot DTSF but don’t have any change to feed the meter (that doesn’t have a CC reader) they will probably not go looking for another spot and just risk the ticket. Maybe that is what the city is hoping for.
You can either listen or read the interview;
GRABAR: I think so. Essentially, parking enforcement serves as a subset of what is now known as revenue-driven policing. And the idea here is that cities take advantage of these parking laws to try and get as much money out of people as possible, but not in the way that you would think, right? I mean, I think this is a common misconception. Meter rates are actually, for the most part, pretty low in most cities, which is to say they are below the market clearing price that would create empty spaces on every block. Most cities make more money from illegal parking fines than they do from meters and garage taxes put together. So, for example, New York City in 2015 made $565 million in parking fines. It’s the biggest category of fines that the city issues. But they made just $200 million from parking meters.
So what’s essentially being run here – and I don’t know if cities are conscious of this – is a system that is poorly designed that almost seems like the incentives are in favor of illegal parking because for the city, that’s where they make their money.
I would have loved to been a fly on the wall when the Parking Director, Matt Nelson and Mayor TenHaken had a conversation about getting creative with raising more parking fees. Probably went something like this;
Nelson says, “Paul, we just gotta find a way to get people to park in the ramps more.”
TenHaken responds, “Thank goodness I stopped that naked Indian mural, because that certainly would have drove drivers away.”
The Skate Park Association wants to use the NorthEast corner of Nelson Park (Cliff Ave & 10th Street) for a new skate park. The city did offer them the homeless camp land behind the farmers market, but I think they felt there wouldn’t be a lot of skaters going to the Silver Moon after a day of skating 🙂 Press release below;
A public meeting to discuss the Nelson Park Master Plan will be held on Tuesday, June 25, 2019, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. in Meeting Room A at the Downtown Library, 200 North Dakota Avenue.
An update to the Nelson Park Master Plan was prompted from the idea of adding a skate plaza to the park. Nelson Park has been home to a modular skatepark for many years, but the local skate boarding community desires to create a new and exciting experience for all skaters. The Sioux Falls Skatepark Association has been investigating the possibilities of creating a skate plaza in downtown Sioux Falls, and will be sharing information about their findings. Sioux Falls Parks and Recreation will be presenting an updated concept plan for Nelson Park and would love for you to come and share any ideas you may have.
The master planning process allows the neighborhood and the community at‑large to provide feedback that will be used to develop the final master plan. Projects identified as part of the master plan can then be considered for future development of the City’s Parks and Recreation system.
Some of the same players and city employees who helped the Rubber Stamp 6 and Bowlcut-n-Bucktooth ramrod the parking ramp through are still employed by the city, namely Matt Nelson, whose wife just became the audit something manager.
It will be interesting to see if the city will do any internal investigating of how city employees let this bad deal go through. In reality, it should not even have gotten to the city council for approval.
Now it will cost taxpayers more money to hire an external auditor. The hits just keep coming.