March 2017

The Sioux Falls City Council needs to KILL the downtown parking ramp before we blow anymore money

l3wis March 2, 2017 1Comments

There is already suspect of how trustworthy the developer is, and a horrible location. The council needs to stop anymore funding right now;

While the parking ramp is an effort City Hall is committed to, the same can’t be said for some on the City Council.

Councilor Pat Starr, who last fall led a successful effort last year to cut the bulk of the project funding from the 2017 budget until more specific costs could be determined, said with every contract that’s approved the Council is being put deeper in a corner where it becomes increasingly difficult to say no to borrowing money for the project.

“It feels like we’re putting the cart before the horse here,” Starr said. “We haven’t even agreed to build it yet.”

To his point, during discussions and debate regarding the planned city administration building, proponents of the new building like Mayor Mike Huether and his staff repeatedly said dollars invested in the planning process would be wasted if the project stalled.

“It’s not a given that we’re all going to vote for the project so I’m just concerned that if you spend $231,000 … and then we say no to it. At that point the argument can be made that we’ve already invested so much money we have to move forward with it,” Councilor Theresa Stehly said of the parking Ramp.

Of course Erpenbach doesn’t see a problem with spending the money because it comes from the sky, apparently;

For Councilor Michelle Erpenbach, it’s worth noting that whether it’s engineering, consulting or construction, taxpayers aren’t the ones footing the bill for the parking ramp project. Rather, the city’s enterprise parking fund, fueled with user fees like parking tickets and meter and lease revenues, will cover project costs and bond payments.

“It’s all paid by people who actually use the parking facilities,” Erpenbach said.

Hey, and guess who most of those people are Michelle? The good taxpayers of Sioux Falls. You can call it a ‘fee’ all you want, but it really is a parking ‘tax’.