During the last city council race, candidate Nick Weiland suggested that the city implement participatory budgeting. It’s not a new concept, but something that has evolved over the years thru technology.
When Councilor Stehly attended the NLC’s conference a few years ago, she also was introduced to the concept.
We don’t have it in Sioux Falls, in fact, we don’t even have anything that comes close.
I have been following city budgets for the past 13 years, all I have ever seen is a massive growth in government and fewer services for that growth. I believe if citizens were engaged from the get go, those budgets would shrink and we would get more bang and more services (that actually help people) for the buck. Instead we allow city employees shape the budget, and hand it over to the mayor, in which he hands off to the council and us citizens get about 20 minutes for input. It’s disgusting.
First off, according to Charter, the city council should be forming the budget from input from city directors AND citizens. This should be a 12 month, all-year process. Instead they take very little input from citizens, pack it full of non-profit and corporate welfare giveaways, and leave us with a half-mile bike trail expansion and a cement Ping-Pong table.
One reason I didn’t show up last night is because by that time it was too late, the budget was most likely formed MONTHS ago behind closed doors in the mayor’s office. My five minutes don’t mean squat.
But let’s look at the explosive nature of our budget. In 2016 our budget was $471 Million, this year it is $545 Million, a 15% increase in 4 years. Has your wages increased that much? What about your cost of living? In an essence, if you were making $40K in 2016, your wages would be $46K in 2020, a $1,500 raise each year for 4 years. Has that happened in your life? Highly unlikely.
Until the city council (our true representatives of citizens) and the citizens actually have year-long input into the budget, all it represents is growing government for the mayor’s corporate trough friends.
Just look at the people defending the mayor’s mis-communication about citywide cleanup, saying things like, “It’s our personal responsibility” to clean up the city. In some respects I agree with the good pastor who said that, but we all pay taxes collectively so that we have services that we collectively receive and can’t manage to take care of on our own, you know, like educating the masses, building roads and infrastructure, or taking 100 FT tall trees off of our house with a giant tractor/loader.
Not only do we no longer have a say in how our taxes are being spent, we are no longer getting much in return for those high taxes.
As of last evening, your property taxes just increased 2.4% and that was without a word of discussion on the part of YOUR city council.
And, BTW, that’s IN ADDITION to the property tax increase levied this year on you by Minnehaha County AND the Sioux Falls School District.
I agree. The corruption and arrogance was truly visible at last nights meeting.
Last night, PTH’s mishandling of Public Input at the beginning of the meeting (Two Avera corporate execs taking up 20% of Public Input time to stroke PTH’s ego), another man (who I don’t believe stated his name nor was he asked for it) who nuked 3-mins talking about the new Culture Minister job (which should have been delayed until the later Budget discussion agenda item), denying Councilor Starr’s request (due to 1 or more of the above stated reasons) for an extension of the Public Input time, AND PTH’s tie breaking vote . . . . are excellent illustrations why the Charter Revision petition to get the mayor out of Council Meetings has BIG TIME merit.
You probably pointed it out at the time but Greg “Nut”zert made a statement when considering higher franchise fees for cable companies. To paraphrase he said something like just because you can raise a fee to 5% it doesn’t mean you have to – then voted for a 3% fee. I understand this gets passed on to midco’s customers but wonder how many more people would drop cable should rates go much higher. Who is buttering “Nut”zert’s bread?
I would love to see this city audited and investigated for fraud, waste, and abuse.
Where do I go to sign that Triple-Check petition?
Yah, but there is just one problem. There is still debris on the city’s side of the red line which has been there since the night of the tornadoes. I am talking about Lincoln Avenue in particular, which is perpendicular to the auto parts store that blew up. Why isn’t the city cleaning up their side? I am talking about stuff that was not moved there by citizens, but landed there because of the storm. If the city was better organized, this debris would be noticed, but the city in its attitude of personal responsibility is not taking on their own responsibility to take inventory of their mess, but yet they have the audacity and dependency to rely on citizens to inform them of the citys mess.
God forbid that a massive tornado ever hits the Taupsters, but if it does, you watch, the city will be all over the place helping out in an organized manner.
To Extremely Stable Genius who is Wishing for a more taupster tornado,
Check out the damage along LaQuinta Ave in Heather Ridge and at the corner of Audie and Mustang in the Prairie Meadows neighborhood. Pretty taupster. Pretty damaged. By a tornado, pretty taupsterish in its targets.
If I owned a pickup (or even a black SUV!), I would answer PTH’s call to voluntarism to haul a load from Lincoln.
Say, does HisManMike [TM] Huether still own a pickup? You might call him to come haul a load from Lincoln. Perhaps recruit him back to the Dem party in the process!
them ef2’s bracketed that hood where butina made her USA ground-zero stank with the republican party. you can see it on that map. God let it happen as a warning
TGfG
I realize “Taupster” got hit, but north of 57th St. definitely did and if the roles were reversed the Mayor would be more organized.