February 2016

More empty promises from the Sioux Falls Parks Department

l3wis February 15, 2016 4Comments

Imagine my surprise (well not really) when I was reading the approval of contracts (Item #1) for Tuesday’s council meeting and I found this item;

Parks/Rec NA Furnish Three Editions of the 2016 Summer, Fall, and

Winter/Spring Activities Guide

$ 82,742

A couple of years ago, the Parks department told the public they were going ‘another direction’ on the activities guide, and only make it basically available online with a ‘few’ mailed copies. They still have to implement that idea. According to the bid specs, they plan to mail this guide to 76,000 households (3x) with an overrun of 3,500. Hardly scaling back the mailing. I can also tell you that the above number probably doesn’t include postage either, which could easily run about $40,000.

So what happened? I actually liked the idea of just mailing the guide to people who ONLY wanted the dead tree version and didn’t have a computer to access it. It makes economic sense. When we start talking about subsidizing a city indoor pool at over a $1 million a year, cutting free passes and raising rates on paratransit why are we not eliminating this booklet that most people recycle and could access online?

While they nickel and dime the rest of us to death, they throw the greenbacks in a burn barrel on stupid things like this.