Ugly Table #72
l3wis 
Customer: “I’m glad to see you are in a good mood. The hostess who sat us was not.”
Me: She is never in a good mood. I nicknamed her, “FREE Appetizer.”
S. L. Ehrisman (c) 11/16/12
November 2012
Snowgates Election: It’s in the city council’s court now
I’m good at making decisions, especially when it comes to terminating city clerks and water bill inserts, not so much on elections.
It is very evident that if the city decides to have a joint election with the school district this spring, it will be the SF city council’s decision to do so, not the mayor. The contract that the school district has signed already has been deferred, again, to the December 4, city council meeting (after the meeting was down for 20 hours, a continuing problem*). Which seems a bit odd, since council chair doesn’t seem to have a problem with making decisions without consulting the council first (Watch this exchange between Staggers and Erpenbach about the authorization of a water bill insert. FF to about 5 minutes before the end of the meeting). Everyone from the past city clerk to former mayors and city councilors have said the council must call this election and appropriate the funds, including former councilor, Vernon Brown – who has also signed the petition. They would be crazy to flout the public’s wishes on this petition.
Is the city council waiting to make a decision until the petitions are turned in? I do know that collection of signatures will end in November and they are expected to be turned in before the end of Decemeber.
I think this delay in signing the contract has more to do with the icy relationship between the city clerk, Lorie Hogstad, and Bev Chase, SF School District election official. Remember, Lorie and the city council leadership had no problem throwing Bev under the mini-van in the past joint election, and now, they may have to work together.
Karma is a bitch, huh?
*(The delay in videos of city meetings being posted on the city website has been going on for several months. First off, as a taxpayer, I pay for this service, it SHOULD work. Secondly, I shouldn’t have to load some special software to view the meetings. And thirdly, delaying a public meeting is a FORM of censorship by holding back critical information to the public. If this continues, as it has for several months. I am considering filing an ethics complaint against the city clerk. Maybe this will get her to FIX the issue once and for all.)
Dictator Homan strikes again
I kinda knew how the school consolidation would play out.
Last Wednesday, superintendent Homan recommended a consolidation of three of its elementary schools closing Jefferson, Longfellow and Mark Twain, in order to re-build one big school on the Mark Twain site.
While Pammy promised only a few weeks back that this was only in the research stage, now all of sudden it is go time. This is how the school board and Homan operate, pretend like nothing is a big deal, and when people aren’t paying attention work quietly in the shadows.
What do I think will happen with the school consolidation? Well it seems Pam has already made up her mind, and well, that means the school board has also (they always do what Pammy tells them to do) because fighting Homan often results in defeat. But it seems some parents are setting the stage for a battle royale;
“I think we need to get the board’s attention. We need them to vote against the consolidation, at least for now. I think we need to talk about it more,” Andersen said.
I feel sorry for Mr. Andersen and his ‘good intentions’ he hasn’t lived in SF long enough to know the wrath of Homan. I suggest he shows up to the school board meeting with a very angry mob. I found that angry mobs are more effective on Homan then honey and bees.
Personally I would like to see the small schools remain, but I don’t have a dog in this fight. I have secretly suspected that someone is interested in purchasing the Longfellow and Jefferson properties, but Homan always keeps her cards close, so we will never know those tiny details until further down the road. I hope some of the parents bring this up in the meeting. What happens to the properties once the schools close?
What also amazes me is that larger class sizes have proven not to be as effective in educating kids. But hey, who bothers with silly studies, we need  to save $800,000 so Pammy can get a raise and new truck to drive.
Post-election thoughts by Guest Poster
This Ellis rant has me going and I wanted to keep it handy for the future. The lawyers do not like this decision by the public. The governor does not like his pet projects failing. How dare the public tell the government what to do. If we the public, to do not vote the way the vested interests or their protégés in positions of power want or get swatted down by the public, we are uninformed or worse, dumb. If the people in power or money do not want us to vote down their pet projects, they better get out their voters and not just rely on the paid advertising to coerce us.
We had the chance on election day 2012 to let 7 ill-conceived issues become the law of the land. The people of South Dakota even surprised me with the votes recorded. The worst of the worst went down to defeat. As Lewis responded, my faith has also been restored. These were primarily ALEC model legislation items defeated, excellent!
Now consider the failure of most of the Democrats. It was not a failure of the candidates by and large. It was a failure of the process the Dems have been using for many years. Believe or not, the deficit of registered Dems is not a big deal. The problem is the losing process the Dems have been pursuing. The lack of a long range cohesive vision to present the voters is showing. At some point the Dems have to quit being GOP-Lite and actually stand for something. The voters want and crave some vision to vote for and not just be against everything the MSM ‘reports’ out of Pierre and Washington. The voters want to be guided to the polls and they want to vote for something. How sad it is the Democrats did not even try to get out the vote with carpooling on the reservations. What a waste of great issues and great candidates by not physically supporting them.
So now we political geeks look forward to 2014. Do the Democrats look forward with trepidation or excitement? The party does not want to look to the past for inspiration on how to win in the future. The cool things like social media are not ever going to win elections. Social media is only for keeping your troops going, it will never win new converts. New converts only come by pressing the flesh in person. It has been proven by results for the last 34+ years of Democratic defeats, cool modern media processes do not win in a small vote state like South Dakota. When was the last time you saw a major grassroots, get out the vote effort in South Dakota run by the Democratic State Party office? Maybe 1974, probably 1972. We old-timers who know what it feels like to have a real Democratic Party in action are disgusted by the way the party was taken over by consultants and political hacks who pack up their ditty bags when they lose. They pack up the voter lists, the organization and the money as they leave the state. Look at the wasted effort spent on Obama for America. When they left the state to more fertile pastures, we in South Dakota no longer had any organization to continue the effort to identify, then get out the vote.
Look at the undercurrent of dissatisfaction presented by the voters of South Dakota. These voters could be educated and organized by the Democratic Party for a lot less than the ad buys recently made. These voters will turn out to the polls because the party kept track and helped them feel vested in the process. The SD Dems do not even try. When will they try? The cute saying Will Rogers was fond of “I don’t belong to an organized political party; I am a Democrat†doesn’t mean Democrats should not organize. It means Democrats are a coalition of many groups who are striving to be better. In my experience, Democrats by and large are not Kool-Aid drinkers, but people looking for the positive vision. The state party needs to quit wasting candidates, money and voters playing games.
UPDATED: TIF #18. Like clockwork another planned TIF handout to a wealthy SF developer
“I will get Batman someday, I will, but first I need a TIF.”
Notice on the agenda there is no way to FF to item’s 16 and 17. There is also NO attached PDF or PP documents with the items.
Hmmmm.
So I will sum up the TIF for you (FF:43:40) Mega-rich SF Developer Craig Lloyd is asking for a(nother) TIF, because, gosh-golly-gee, nobody wants to invest in developing DT because it is too expensive and risky. (Yeah, landing a Hilton hotel DT must have been a money losing endeavor).
I will have to give props to the city, they sure put on a real Broadway musical of epic proportions telling us how this is needed (TIF #18 – Phillips to the Falls area). Of course they brought up the same old song and dance; environmental cleanup, drainage, etc. But isn’t this an expense every developer has to incur when they develop land? Is it out of the ordinary? Just wondering?
I will give Planning Commission chair Ken Dunlap credit for asking great questions about TIF’s and how they take away from the tax rolls to subsidize a project. Ken gets the bumbling-mumbling community development employee ‘Brent’ to admit that the expense numbers presented are an ‘estimate’ and not ‘actual’ costs. So now we are basing TIF’s on ‘estimates’? Isn’t that special.
Ken also gets the city to admit that the project ‘cannot’ move forward without the TIF. Remember when we last heard this song and dance? COSTCO. Well, how did that turnout? The project WAS going to happen without the TIF, but our complacent and self-serving city council voted for it anyway.
Back to the meeting . . . Jeff Schmidt couldn’t take the line of questioning anymore from Dunlap so he shoves Bumbling Brent aside in an attempt to stop the line of questioning. Well, didn’t stop Brent, he returns to the podium to make the BS statement that it would be far cheaper and less of a risk to build these ‘loft apartments’ on the edge of town.
Really? I consistently hear from people that they want to live DT but there is not enough rentals available. These apartments will fill up FAST! To make this crazy statement that we need to subsidize an apartment building because no one will build it unless the city bails them out is a flat out lie! Lloyd has rental property all over this city. If he didn’t make money from these properties he wouldn’t continue to build them, and these apartments are no different. He would build them with or without the TIF. Why doesn’t someone just get Lloyd to admit that?
“Craig, what if the TIF is not awarded, will you still develop?”
Of course it doesn’t stop Lloyd from coming forward and defending the city’s ‘estimates’ on costs. He first starts out by talking about the recession a few years ago (yeah, I’m sure you have been really hurting – where can I send the box of tissues?) Lloyd then starts talking about all the costs involved with developing DT. Yeah? So what? Every project has a ‘cost’. He then confesses that he couldn’t build the project without the TIF. He says that this project has become a ‘love affair’ and not a money making endeavor. Yeah, right. Like Mr. Lloyd is doing this project out of the goodness of his heart, like every project he has done in this city. Because making millions over the years was something he has done for the good people of Sioux Falls. I can accept that. What I can’t accept is when he starts to take away tax dollars for education to help fund his ‘projects’ because you know, he is helping us out.
So I am wondering how much Lloyd paid the city to put this cheerleader session on for him. It seems now private developers even have community development working for them.
UPDATE:
I have a few more things to add to this post after closer review. The Planning Commission weren’t actually given the plan for the district until the day prior to the meeting. This is really an administrative issue coming out of Community Development. Are they having trouble managing their workload? In fact, there are still TIF’s out there, going back to TIF 13 that do not have development agreements in place yet.
I know I can be a little tough on Lloyd, but honestly I’m guessing a lot of development DT would not happen without him, even if we are subsidizing his projects (which I do not agree with). This particular TIF may be justified because unfortunately much of what remains for developable land in Uptown is contaminated and to the point that there will be restrictions placed on what is allowed for development. Without the TIF for Craig he wouldn’t be able to get the financial institutions to back his development loans. This is where the problem really lies in terms of developing downtown. It is more expensive both in the beginning and end to develop and own property – even if there is a demand for the end product. The financial institutions know that there are issues and increase financing percentages to ensure their butts are covered. Because of those increases it is tough, without TIF, to find investors that will provide enough capital to make these projects happen. But every situation is different.
The biggest problem is that Community Development isn’t doing their job in making sure that the developer remains in check and information is being provided to all approving authorities prior to asking them for recommendations. What will happen if the City can’t get their act together and get the development agreements for these things done? That means by the time that revenues start flowing in, they won’t be able to be paid back out because the legal documentation allowing them to do so isn’t in place. That is messy and will cause many more issues in years to come.
Maybe a moratorium should be placed on issuing TIF’s until the Council addresses the topic. That is, if the council even knows what the heck is going on over in the Community Development office.