September 2022
l3wis City of Sioux Falls Finance Director claims not approving property tax increase would cause ‘structural deficit’
Them’s some fancy words from our chief finance bull thrower (FF 52:00)
So what is a structural deficit?
the amount by which a government’s spending is more than it receives in taxes in a particular period, whether the economy is performing well or not
Mr. Pritchett made this wild claim at the city council meeting last night, and six of the councilors agreed with him.
It is total nonsense.
As one citizen pointed out the way to not produce municipal debt is to budget better, in other words do the job we elected you to do. He also pointed out that this $2 million dollar increase is less than 1% of the total budget and can easily be made up.
The problem is for decades the city has implemented the piling on approach to building the yearly budget instead of doing zero based budgeting each year. This has caused bloated department budgets.
As for property taxes, valuations in Sioux Falls have skyrocketed over the past 3 years driving property taxes up with or without government intervention.
Even if the economy was doing great right now, this natural FREE market increase makes up for any inflationary increases we may need.
We also have given millions away in TIFs.
It cracks me up that the city council would nickel and dime $50K for the Siouxland Heritage endowment fund and $68K for an arts coordinator, but doesn’t blink an eye approving $50 million in TIFs for parking ramps attached to luxury condos.
That’s our council doing the important work, making sure developers, banksters and bondsters are happy and well fed.
I’m starting to think the only structural deficit the city has exists between the ears of our councilors.
Top Down approach to affordable housing is a ruse
Ever since the Reagan administration introduced trickle-down economics governments across our country have experimented with it. It simply doesn’t work. The concept is that if you give tax breaks to the very top it somehow will help the ones below in better jobs and housing. In fact it has done the opposite, expanding the wealth gap.
The cat was let out of the bag during this interview yesterday that the TIF sponsored housing development in SW Brandon was depending on the tired old broken system of trickle-down;
Meanwhile, Karl Fulmer, the executive director of Affordable Housing Solutions in Sioux Falls, told DNN that these TIF-paid city developments are an effective way of addressing affordable housing.
“The benefit of just building more houses in the $250,000 to $400,000 range still provides the unit, and you can see the transition out of more affordable units from those who might make enough to buy homes in that price range”, Fulmer said.
In other words, these new houses in new “accessible housing” developments actually are not for those most struggling to find affordable housing the most. They are far those who bought smaller, older “starter houses” in town that cost less than $250,000 and are ready to move out of them.
The true affordable housing comes in those starter houses. And the more new “accessible” houses funded by city TIFs that are built, the more those older, smaller houses become available to lower income people.
[insert laughter]
If you speak with anyone in the real estate business they will tell you that these homes are usually owned by lower income people, families, retired folks or rental property, they are not the Jeffersons moving on up. And even if what he was saying was true, most of the homes being sold in this development will go to NEW homeowners not people looking for a step up. In fact, I have argued that many of the starter homes in the lower price range (mostly in the core of the city) have more square feet and bigger yards (and basements) than what these new homes will have.
A better approach would be addressing the housing crisis we have with the people who are having the crisis;
Pat Starr, who represents the northeast district, also told Dakota News Now on Monday that city government is continuing to “dig a hole” by continuing to dig literal holes to build homes partly funded in part by Tax Increment Financing (TIFs).
“We need to talk about the real causes of the housing issues in our city rather than trying to put a band-aid and build 65 houses, which is what this program will do.” Starr said.”
“It’s not the program I’m concerned as much about as as I am figuring out who we’re trying to help. And, it seems to me we have a wage issue more than we have a housing issue.”
We must be giving a helping hand to those who are at the bottom first to lift the other boats. The city has decades long programs in place including low interest Community Development loans and grants. We also need to upgrade the existing infrastructure in our core such as streets and lighting. We can do all this using existing money in our 2nd penny and Federal dollars.
The president of Sioux Metro Growth Alliance, which helps people with payment on houses in rural and suburban communities surrounding Sioux Falls, disagrees.
“If you look at wage growth around the country and in the Sioux Falls market in the last three years, it’s been astronomical,” Jesse Fonkert said.
While wages have increased in SF, inflation and housing costs have been beyond astronomical and have wiped away any wage increases.
But Fonkert does agree with Starr’s assessment that continuing these city-funded housing projects is not solving the affordable housing crisis.
“It’s a challenging situation, because if you spend too much money on government programming, you’ll have companies that will just hike their prices up,” Fonkert said.
Notice the Sioux Steel District and Cherapa II projects didn’t announce they were building hundreds of units of affordable housing after receiving a combined TIF payout of $50 million. Developers will always go where the money is, and that is how a FREE market system works. But tax rebates for parking ramps attached to condos isn’t fixing anything it’s just making that wealth gap larger.
Lincoln County Sheriff releases bizarre statement on gunshot death over the weekend
I had to dig around google to make sure I was reading this statement correctly;
On September 10, 2022, Lincoln County Deputies responded to a call regarding gunshots in Harrisburg, SD. Upon arrival law enforcement located a deceased individual. This matter is being investigated as an unattended death and foul play is not suspected. Given the nature of the death, no additional details will be released.
Sheriff Steve Swenson
Okay, here are some definitions;
The phrase unattended death refers to a death in which the body is not found for days, weeks, or in some cases, months.
foul play; any treacherous or unfair dealing, especially involving murder
This is what I do know. A well known music venue in Harrisburg was hosting a hip-hop show that night that was supposed to occur in a well known music venue in Sioux Falls. That bar declined to do the show, so it got moved to Harrisburg. The shooting occurred a few blocks from the venue in Harrisburg. A friend of mine that lives very near to the incident told me he heard multiple gunshots.
Now I am NO police investigator, but I don’t know too many people who go to a hip hop show, walk a couple of blocks away after leaving the show and kill themselves in a stranger’s driveway. Also, people who kill themselves using a gun don’t shoot themselves multiple times.
Maybe they did. Richard Benda shot himself using a 5 foot branch while pheasant hunting by himself, so stranger things have happened 
It also could have been an intoxicated person screwing around with a gun and accidentally shot themself.
I am hoping someone, anyone in the media questions the sheriff. Was this a murder? A suicide or an accidental shooting? Because the statement above isn’t reassuring.
The water problem with Wholestone’s packing plant
Recently Joe Kirby wrote a post about why another slaughterhouse is NOT a good idea for Sioux Falls;
Slaughterhouses are a horrible fit for our community. Affordable housing and workforce availability are already huge concerns. The idea of adding lots of difficult, low-paying, low-skill jobs, the type that have traditionally been a drag on our progress and success, makes no sense to me. And expanding the presence inside our city of an industry which has long caused pollution problems in our river and air makes no sense. I simply don’t understand why we would want more of this in Sioux Falls.
I agree, I don’t want another slaughterhouse built, but I would much more prefer there was an effort to not only STOP Wholestone but to close down Smithfields.
The issue with this entire fiasco has nothing to do with Wholestone vs. the Citizens vs. the City, it has to do with South Dakota voters, including right here in Sioux Falls who vote against their own interests. When the City Council passed Shape Places, several citizens said this was a bad thing and wanted to see some changes to the zoning ordinances, so they referred it to a vote. The development community along with some councilors said nothing to see here, move along, and the voters ultimately passed the original plan.
The argument then is still the argument today, Shape Places took power away from the council to make conditional use decisions, and when you take power from our citizen representatives, you take power from us.
I think if the council still had that power instead giving total control over to the developers Wholestone would have been denied by the Council or scaled way back and it has little to do with water quality or air quality, it has to do with water supply.
Where do you think WF will get their water? The reason WF is building within the city limits has nothing to do with the labor market, it has to do with using city resources, they will be using a lot.
Besides letting the developers take over almost all branches of city government we have also let them plan this city instead of the government and citizens;
Granted, the city does a lot of planning. It has a parks plan, a capital spending plan, a downtown plan and much more. But I am not aware of any sort of comprehensive plan for our city with direct participation of the mayor and council. In support of that, some council members and candidates have told me they wished they could be involved in that sort of big-picture, strategic planning. If there was such a plan, I doubt it would have included the phrase, “add more slaughterhouses”.
This is something Janet Brekke stressed in her entire 4 years on the council. Her colleagues on the dais ignored her and did nothing. I think if she would have gotten re-elected and we would have changed a couple of other seats, Brekke would have been successful moving it forward.
Once again, in Sioux Falls and the rest of the state we continue to vote against our own best interests, and until that changes, you will see NO change in the status quo; DEVELOPERS RUN OUR CITY.