August 2017

Sioux Falls City Council Agenda, Aug 8, 2017

Tuesday again starts with the budget hearings, where the city directors show up, give half the story and than stonewall when asked to answer questions, their favorite line to city councilors, “Can I get back to you on that?” Once, I would like one of them to say, “No! You are here to give your presentation and to answer questions about that presentation, you should be better prepared. So I don’t care who you have to text, google or call, but I’ll give you 5 minutes. GO!”

Either way, the topics at hand are; entertainment tax, public health, Parks & Rec, Public Works, City Council travel budget, and prevention services.

The rumor going around is that the city council travel budget will be cut and I am guessing the city will end funding prevention services, or scaling it back by a lot.

Now let’s move on to the big fish, the city council meeting.

They start by honoring Bob Jamison and his service to the city.

Item #1, Consent Agenda. Boomerang Investments, which is really Norm Drake from Legacy is asking for an $80K facade grant easement for his property that was completely leveled last year. I’m just curious how the city could give a $80K facade grant to a building that DOES NOT exist? I thought these grants were for fixing up the facades of ‘existing’ buildings, not ones that were leveled due to negligence. I hope at least one councilor pulls their head from their behind and pulls this from the consent agenda and ask WTH is going on here. (correction, the wrong address was used, it should be 132 S. Phillips, the PAve Building)

Also I see I was off about $60K in my estimate for 3 portable snow makers. They must have bought the Mercedes Benz version instead of the Honda Version, $85K for 3 of them. Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow.

Item #2, Change Orders. Looks like they need another $66K for the new bear exhibit at the zoo. Who knew digging a hole and building a cave could be so unpredictable and so hard to plan for? Good thing the city is one big money tree when it comes to making snow and building caves.

Item#8, Second Reading. The council will take final action on the Parks Board Districting ordinance. Not sure how this will go. While I think Stehly will have 4-5 votes on her side, not sure if she will get the 6 to be veto proof.

Item #9, Second Reading. Not sure if Councilor Erpenbach’s rental housing ordinance will pass without several amendments, which I think will just fail it. Ironically while everyone has been talking about Stehly’s ordinance, that has a good chance of passing, this one may be deader than a doornail.

Item #10, Second Reading. Basically the Lacey Property re-zoning was amended, so it has to have another run through on the amendments. This should be final passage, which I think will pass.

Item #11, 1st Reading. Setting up new district boundaries in Sioux Falls.

Items#13-17, Resolutions. Fining ‘Bad Neighbors’.

Item #19, Resolution. Supporting the candidacy of a member of the board of directors for the SD Public Assurance Alliance*, City of Sioux Falls finance director Tracy Turbak.

*South Dakota government insurance partnership, you know, the peeps that blame God when they don’t want to pay out claims to taxpayers while spending millions on private attorneys to fight Native Americans from having a voting booth that would cost a couple grand.

Item #21, Resolution. Legislative priorities. Notice they don’t want to change the way TIFs have been mostly decided by the city. They also want to keep the 911 surcharge (no sunset). They support alternative publications for public notice (Hey, DaCola is open for business). They also want to compensate those who serve on volunteer citizen boards (do they know what the word ‘volunteer’ means?) They finish up by creating another fee. As my grandpa Mel once said, “One of these days you are going to need a paid license to have sex.” Wait . . . that’s not such a bad idea.

That’s our city government at work, for one day.

Sioux Falls Parks Board has been just fine for 102 Years

J. Ellis wrote a hilarious satire piece about the Sioux Falls Parks Board (yes folks, it’s satire, why do we have to spell this out for you all the time!!?)

But Theresa Stehly, a city councilor, has brought forth a ludicrous proposal that future Park Board members come from other parts of the city besides the part where important people live. It would doom our parks.

Now, some of you might think the Park Board is simply a Chardonnay sipping social club whose membership lives in a roughly half-mile area of St. Charles Lane in swanky southeastern Sioux Falls. That’s what they want you to think. I’m telling you, it’s just a cover.

The Park Board is the shadow government of Sioux Falls. It is all powerful.

Who do you think ordered the grass in the parks and along the bike trail to go uncut this summer because the city doesn’t have enough money to buy gas for its lawn mower? The Park Board.

While Ellis’ piece is a parody, I have often wanted to tell the mayor that he shouldn’t be concerned about districting, rich people live in all the districts of our city, you just have to find them.

A South DaCola foot soldier sent this friendly message to the city in support of Stehly’s proposal;

Subject: Parks

Details: I support districts on the Parks Board. It is clear that concentrating members to one geographic area of the city will lead to unfair decisions and a lack of diverse opinions and priorities.

A parks director responded. His argument that that the status quo has been good for 102 years, so why change it now?

Dear Mr. – – – –

Thank you for reaching out to us and sharing your position regarding the representation of the Parks & Recreation Board by district.

We would like to first point out that the parks and recreation board members do not currently all reside in the same geographic area. The Parks & Recreation Board has been in service to our community for 102 years and during that time the board members have been selected from the community at large.

We also believe that the current process for selecting board members has produced very positive results with our parks and recreation system being one of the very best in the country as evidenced by our Parks and Recreation Agency Accreditation dating back to 2010. As a result, it is our belief that the proposal to appoint parks and recreation board members by district is a solution in search of a problem.

The City of Sioux Falls Parks & Recreation Board remains committed to serving the entire community regardless of where the parks and recreation board members happen to reside at the time they are appointed to the board.  We would also point out that the parks and recreation board is an advisory board. Capital Improvement Budgets, Operating Budgets and Management Contracts are ultimately approved by the city council and those council members are elected by council district, so there is already a considerable system of check and balances in place.

Thank you again for sharing you position.  Please feel free to contact me directly at 605.367.8150 if you have any other questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

Kelby Mieras, CPSI, Park Operations Manager

If the Parks Board doesn’t really make important decisions, why even have them at all? Why not just send all of those parks decisions to the city council to begin with? Seems they have wasted 102 years of the citizens time. Who knew this ruse was going on for so long?

Oh, and why is a city employee lobbying against a city councilor’s legislative idea? Shouldn’t they be un-bias in these matters? Oh, forgot who his boss was.

More concerns about a possible multi-million dollar TIF to developer

As I have mentioned before, with Sioux Falls School District recently passing a $50 million dollar opt-out and the plans for a possible $30 million dollar bond for a new HS this is the WRONG time to be handing out property tax discounts in the form of TIF’s to wealthy, successful developers. Not to mention all the issues with open enrollment causing widespread segregation and almost half of Sioux Falls students on FREE or reduced lunches.

Here are a few more reasons;

• The county is struggling to make ends meet with rising crime while building a new jail.

• Developers, especially one of the largest in the city, having been doing very well for a long time, especially with record breaking building permits, do they really need tax discounts or breaks to be successful? Shouldn’t we be focusing tax incentives on affordable and workforce housing and not retail and luxury lofts?

• The state is in the midst of considering some rule changes when it comes to giving so much power to municipalities concerning TIF’s. Expect some legislation in the upcoming 2018 session. Not only does the county and school district want a bigger say in these matters, so does the state.

• There are numerous conflicts of interest on the council. Besides Councilor Marshall Selberg being an independent contractor for Lloyd Companies, the mayor and some of the others have received campaign donations from Lloyd. Starr, Neitzert and Stehly seem to be the only candidates who have not. You can’t hardly vote on a $43 million dollar project with a TIF incentive with only 3 votes.

There are way to many conflicts of interest here for the council to even consider a TIF incentive. I think approving the project is fine, but when it concerns a tax discount, that should be taken off the table.

Belfrage & Epp defend Stehly’s idea for districting parks board

Greg and Todd discussed the ‘logic’ behind the districting and questioned why anyone in the administration would be against it.

But Todd took an interesting twist on it and asked why a director of a department (Don Kearney with Parks and Rec) would take such a public stand against a city councilors legislative idea. Belfrage said that has been the mayor’s ‘style’ having his peeps gun against the councils ideas when it goes against his.

When you have Belfrage and Epp defending Stehly’s idea, you know the Mayor doesn’t have a leg to stand on.