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.
$60K cut to Bishop Dudley house, $66K increase to bear cave. Now that is some priorities Mayor.
Norm Drake obviously does not know the City’s Facade Easement Program has been put on-hold and has no funding for 2018.
4 million for apartment development but we need to cut the funding for the homeless shelter. Also I hope Greg clarifies his confusing comment to the Argus today soon. Seemed out of character for him.
If we skip the snow makers we could fund the Dudley house at current levels. Looking at possible return on investment Id go with the Dudley house.
I’ll use the same economic argument for the Dudley House I used for the safehouse the county setup. By giving shelter to the homeless, we not only improve public safety but we save $$$ by not using more expensive resources to scrape these people off of the street every weekend. I know sometimes it doesn’t seem fair to give away tax dollars to these programs, but at the end of the day we save money. Just like free swimming and bus rides for youth. If these latchkey kids are not swimming at our pools, where would they be? And what would they be up to?
Itrm #1. Is this the project to which Drake was proposing to use faux masonary materials to recreate [simulate ?] an authentic appearance for the building’s exterior?