March 2017

Neighbor Zoning (SF City Council, March 7, 2017)

Zoning, done to abuse those who can least fight the abuse. Notice how the neighbors are once again thrown to the side in a quest to park a semi? Well as long as Jeff Schmitt says it’s OK, we better just suck it up and do it?

The March 7, 2017 Sioux Falls City Council was asked to approve the old Franklin / Joe Foss School building property to C2 after attempts to make it C3 failed. The possible church to whatever is now going to be a bunch of smallish shops. Well, good luck to all of them.

Sioux Falls City Council update (3/21/2017)

It’s about time we got one of these for the prudent tax payers of Sioux Falls!

There will be 93 items on the city council agenda Tuesday night, including many abatements.

In the interest of that, six city councilors and one school board member will be having equalization meetings next week when it comes to property taxes. Councilors are asked to serve on this board and REQUIRED to do so, but somehow two councilors (one of them who is in leadership) conveniently got out of it. Funny how it coincides with their vacations. Things that make you go Hmmm.

Land Use Committee

Annual Development Summary (there was NO docs attached)

City Council Informational (once again no supporting DOCs posted yet)

Fuel Control Audit

SculptureWalk 2017

Code Enforcement 2016 Annual Report

Sioux Falls Thrive (I’m sure is the similar presentation Candy did for the Minnehaha County Commission)

Regular City Council meeting

In the Approval of contracts, I saw our annual contribution to the Sioux Falls Arts council of $47,000 (which I support) but I find it ironic that we had a good thing going with the SE Arts Council at the Horsebarn and we pulled that funding (which was less) and had a lot of great programs going thru that building that were FREE to the public. Now we are subsidizing a butcher shop museum at Falls Park that is NOT free to the public. Let’s talk about our arts funding priorities.

In the same Approval of contracts we have $1.6 million going into the Convention Center. Pretty amazing right after we just spent $100 million on a new events center.

For Parks and Rec they are getting a Snowcat Groomer (which I have no idea what that is) but she’s spendy, $300K

There are many tax abatements and 1st readings for ZONING items. Looks like a very long meeting, would have been a good time to take a vacation if you were a councilor, oh, that’s right two of them are.

Maybe if the City trimmed its OWN trees we wouldn’t have to worry about this stuff

There are several of these turkeys that show up in the Project TRIM neighborhoods trying to scam people;

Over the past few weeks, two separate tree trimming scam reports have been made in Sioux Falls. In both cases, the victims were scammed for more than $3,000 each. The suspect walked up to the victims and offered to trim the victims’ trees since the suspect said he was already working in the area. Unfortunately, neither victim asked to see the suspect’s state sale’s license or City of Sioux Falls peddler’s permit, which all door-to-door sales are required to have. Without those permits, it is illegal to sell goods or services door-to-door.

It’s time city ordinance changed and required the city to trim THEIR trees in the boulevards instead of turning property tax paying homeowners into criminals for NOT taking care of city property.

If anyone is a SCAM artist, it’s the city. They scammed us into taking care of their property, something we already pay taxes to do.