from the Argus Leader;

Councilor questions push for tax-hike legislation

 

One of the Sioux Falls City Council’s legislative priorities for 2009 raised a flag for one councilor Monday night.

Councilor Kermit Staggers questioned why the council was supporting legislation that allows cities to enact a local option tax to raise money for a specific purpose.

Staggers said he would oppose the resolution because it’s not wise for the council to advocate such a tax in a difficult economy and isn’t a good message to residents.

Council Chairman Bob Litz said the city has an expected level of service to meet regardless of the economy.

“This doesn’t mean we are going to enact a tax tomorrow. It just gives the city the freedom to do so when it decides,” Litz said.

Other priorities are ensuring adequate transportation funding, enacting a statewide ban on smoking, developing standards to provide equal 911 service to all and encouraging cooperative efforts to improve 911 services and efficiency.

The measure passed 6-1, with Councilor Kenny Anderson Jr. absent.

Trust me, if the state gives sioux Falls the right to raise taxes to build an event center (that’s what this is about) They would do it the next day.

I also like this line;

the city has an expected level of service to meet regardless of the economy

Bologna. This is another scare tactic by Bob ‘Spread Fear’ Litz. An Events Center has nothing to do with servicing the citizens of this community. Want to service us? Trim our trees, stop pushing snow in the end of our driveways, build a homeless shelter, fix our streets, etc, etc.

Bob, you must really think we are dumb.

Councilor Staggers wrote a great letter to the Argus Leader today on the petition drive;

Comparing the 2008 budget of $362 million to the 2009 budget of $412 million, spending will increase by a whopping 14 percent, way above the rate of inflation.

Geez, wouldn’t it be great to get a 14% raise every year?!

I would like to thank the Argus Leader for printing this letter:

I’m asking all registered voters in Sioux Falls to join me in signing an initiated petition to decrease the city sales tax in 2010. The timing couldn’t be better. There will be a new mayor taking office in 2010 and the possibility of up to four new councilors. This will be the perfect opportunity for citizens to hand them a policy of fiscal restraint and responsibility.

The past six years our city has spent beyond its means. Our city debt is approaching $300 million, we are $80 million behind on road maintenance, and 2009’s budget is a record $412 million. This whopper includes a multitude of capital improvement plan expenditures that are merely handouts to special interest campaign contributors and consultants and unnecessary park and building beautification projects, not road maintenance and infrastructure improvements as city officials would like you to believe.

Our sales tax revenue has doubled during the past decade, so why are we in such a hole? I’ve asked this question several times at council meetings and only have received the runaround from our leaders.

A responsible and representational city government would have granted its citizens with either a tax cut or maintained our current infrastructure while paying down our debt. Instead, four of the councilors and the mayor handed us a maximum tax increase while continuing to borrow more. They claim the extra revenue will be spent on new roads, but there is nothing legally binding them to that promise. Just look at the spending habits of the past six years.

The current City Hall is going to try to dissuade you from voting for this tax decrease. But don’t let their myths about choking growth and progress fool you. With all the consultants and surveys our city has paid for during the past six years, there hasn’t been a single one that has shown lower taxes stunt growth or higher taxes spur growth.

City officials say local business drives our economy. With this I agree. But this only happens when citizens are spending more of their own money on goods and services instead of on higher taxes.

The taxpayers are unknowingly paying for a lame-duck mayor’s legacy. Sign the petition and let the citizens - not a lame-duck mayor and council - decide how our tax dollars should be spent.

Now Councilor Knudson is claiming if we drop the 2^nd penny tax back down to 1.9 we won’t be able to help the homeless.

(Click on Council/County Joint meeting, November 17 – Starts at 44:00 MIN)

You can also watch Munson do the Mexican hat dance with Commissioner Hajek about funding (50:00 MIN). Which is ironic, considering the county isn’t offering any figures.

First off, De, you told us we had to raise this tax to build NEW ROADS! That’s it! Not for homeless shelters, so cut the crap. As for the homeless shelter, I am 100% for it. I agree with Hajek, that this is an investment in safety and savings to the taxpayers in chronic homeless costs. The longer we dick around with finding a location and funding, the more taxpayers are losing. In fact Councilor Anderson and had a great discussion about it. I told him, and he agreed the best place for it would be next to the Law Enforcement center. Budget the money, stop the pissing matches with the county commission, lock yourselves in a room and negotiate a funding and location solution.

As for where the money should come from? Cut the parks budget to make it happen.

See how simple these things are when you use common sense.

But Councilor Litz doesn’t think so.

Listen to the discussion between Staggers and Litz on the Sales Tax decrease initiative. Litz also believes government knows how to spend your money better then you do. He says to keep the town growing.

I think he has been locked up in Munson’s bullet proof closet for too long.

Letter to the Editor today in the Argus Leader;

There is nothing wrong with businesses becoming wealthy through hard work and mutually beneficial trade. Healthy businesses provide jobs, and competition keeps costs down for consumers. But when businesses start to lobby government for special regulatory favors and government spending projects to help pad their profits, they cease to be products of market forces.

Do you think city hall knows how to spend your hard earned money better then you? When the mayor and half of the council raised your sales tax, that’s exactly what they told you. They believe in the ‘trickle down economics’ model of taxation; increase taxes and give that additional revenue to special interests such as developers and contractors in hopes that money will ‘trickle back’ down to those original taxpayers in the form of jobs and growth.

It’s a backwards way of spending YOUR money to improve this community. There is a better way to move us forward; let taxpayers spend that money individually instead of handing it over to city bureaucrats and special interests.

They disguised this regressive tax increase as being progressive because they claim it will help our city grow. Hogwash.

 I’m all for new and maintained roads – I’m just against how they want to pay for them. New roads can be paid for through developer fees, which I fully support and roads can be maintained through the sales tax we already pay. Councilor Costello put it best in an Argus Leader article “It’s a shell game.” There is nothing stopping our mayor and the city council from spending those increased taxes on anything they want to. They sold it to us by saying we needed the new roads yet the CIP budget (which is also funded with sales tax) is packed full of unneeded projects that only benefit a few in our community not the greater good. We can cut the CIP easily and make up for this sales tax decrease. It will mandate the mayor and city council to spend within their means for at least one year (2010) and you also have to remember we may have up to four new councilors and a new mayor in 2010, lets break them in right by showing them they need to have some fiscal restraint.

Want REAL growth in our community? Stop overtaxing our citizens on necessities like food and utilities and let them spend that money on goods and services that helps ALL local businesses grow not just a select few lucky enough to get a handout from the city.

Local business drives our economy in the form of good jobs which promotes growth. Would Sioux Falls grow stronger if ALL local business were getting a piece of the pie and not just the special interests?

Scott L. Ehrisman

Co-Chair, Citizens for a Responsible Sales Tax

Theresa Stehly and I will be on the local radio talk show hosted by Jon Micheals, FORUM on all the Backyard Broadcasting stations Sunday Morning talking about the petition drive for the initiative to reduce sales taxes.

KELO AM and FM at 7 AM and all the other stations at 8 AM. I believe the interview lasted about 40 minutes.

I found this letter to the Editor of the Argus Leader right on;

Representatives of developers, construction companies and other groups such as the Chamber of Commerce took more than two hours to argue the need for such development in promoting the growth of the city.

This was ridiculous. Nobody was opposing the development of these arterial roads or seeking to stall the city’s growth.

I found if complete BS that the mayor let the proponents (developers) speak first. I also found it ironic that not a single individual citizen (not representing a group or business) came forth for this tax increase, and equally ironic that not a single individual came forth (representing a business) to oppose this tax increase. This really was about special interests vs. citizens. And 4 councilors (who are knee deep in special interests) and the mayor voted against the citizens.

The opposition to the tax increase might well have orchestrated another two hours of testimony from representatives of agencies and organizations that know only too well the struggles of a sizeable segment of the city’s population:

Yes, but by the time we got to take the podium it was 10:30 at night (3 1/2 hours after the meeting started, and we got to listen to councilor Knudson whine about being tired (maybe she was tired of reading closed captioning for that long).

I will be interviewed late this afternoon for Jon Micheals Sunday talk show that airs on KELO radio talking about the petition drive.

Matt Okerlund wrote a great column on Sunday about term limits, but he started his column off with I believe to be a veiled endorsement of our goal to get sales tax decreased;

Earlier this month when told a group of residents launched a petition drive to counter his and the City Council’s decision to increase the city sales tax from 1.92 percent to 2 percent on Jan. 1 to raise more money for road construction, Sioux Falls Mayor Dave Munson sounded dumbfounded.

“I’m trying to build a city, and build a city for the future, so that our kids and grandchildren don’t have to go to Minneapolis or Omaha or Kansas City for opportunities. They can stay here,” huffed Munson at the news that Citizens for a Responsible Sales Tax hoped to gather enough signatures to ask voters to cut the city sales tax to 1.9 percent - the pending .08 percent increase plus a bit more - because it is convinced a looming U.S. recession and banks from Iceland to Islamabad making like the Hindenburg is a strange time for city government to be hitting up taxpayers for more money.

“What do they want to take away?” grumbled Munson. He noted the city budget next year includes $615,800 for upgrades to McKennan Park. “Do we want to just drop those programs we want to do for McKennan Park? It’s a possibility.”

If that was a veiled threat, it lacked the veil.

He finishes the column up beautifully

In nine days the other people who inhabit this state will once again tell me just how wrong I am. When that happens, I’ll mutter. I’ll curse. I’ll look to the heavens and shake my head. I might even wonder - if for only a fleeting moment - if somehow, by some fluke of nature, by some crazy twist of fate, I have it backward.

Maybe the misguided one isn’t them.

Maybe it’s me.

And maybe someone should remind the mayor of this city and four-fifths of the Legislature how a democracy works. It seems they have forgotten.

I have long felt that half of our city council and mayor have no clue how a democracy works. The proof is in the pudding. They have been wrong about the Rec Center and Drake Springs Pool, and once again he is wrong about raising taxes on food and utilities to build roads for new development (that may never happen) during a National economic crisis.

Please sign our petition.