South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

December 2022

Affordable Housing Air BNB Curt Soehl Downtown Sioux Falls Mayor TenHaken SF City Council Sioux Falls TIFs

$200 a day rent for Downtown Sioux Falls Loft Apartment

l3wis 6Comments

Yes, that is the daily rent, for the month it will cost you $5,950. I purchased my home 20 years ago, before I bought the house the rent I paid for a nice 1-bedroom behind U-Haul in Pettigrew Heights was $350 a month which included gas and garbage service. For $5,950 a month you could pay a mortgage on a 1 million dollar home. You can rent a decent hotel room in Sioux Falls for about $100 a night. Heck even Hotel Phillips only 2 blocks from this loft charges between $140-$220 a night. An VRBO or Air BNB is even cheaper. This 3 bedroom short term rental in McKennan Park will run you about $162 a night. Even if you had 3 people renting the loft, they would still have to pay $2,000 a month in rent. In fact what you would pay for rent in a year for this place ($70K+) was more then the original purchase price of my home.

Normally I wouldn’t give two rips about what a wealthy property owner/developer in DTSF charges for rent, I’m a free market person and if they can get that kind of ‘rent’ money, good for you. Where I take issue is that this building received a facade easement grant* (basically the city gives private developers money to fix up their historical facades with little oversight). I asked a councilor recently if the half-Inch faux brick that they glued on the front of Lucky’s facade was considered historic? Faux brick has been a trend lately, but I still think it looks fake. I thought one of the requirements of historic restoration was for it to be actually historic, you know, like the fiberglass bulstrades on the Pavilion’s new roof.

Besides the atrocious monthly rent, this really doesn’t make the city look very good when they are handing out TIFs for condo parking ramps and facade grants DTSF but on the other hand are promoting(?) affordable and accessible housing.

*The facade easement program was mysteriously and suddenly re-instated by the urging of Central District Councilor Curt Soehl. No surprise the 1st recipients for the grants were the former campaign treasurer for Soehl (for the 9th and Grange coffee shop that he is restoring) and the investment group that owns the Lucky’s loft who has given thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to Mayor TenHaken and his various supported candidates. The program is nothing but a pay to play payback to these campaign contributors. The program was originally ended because there really is NO need for taxpayers to be propping up these private developers.

The city really needs to get out of the wealthy developer welfare program business and start incentivizing affordable housing DTSF with programs that help build housing density while focusing on the individual property and small rental owners. Instead the city’s solution is to build slab on grade tract homes in a cornfield in Southern Brandon. Even a chicken playing tic-tac-toe is smarter than that.

UPDATE: In 2017 Rapid City used a very small TIF to support affordable housing (H/T Mike Zitterich). It was 5 years ago, but for a $26,500 TIF the developer was able to build 5 Town Homes – the cheapest with the price tag of $109K. Even with inflationary adjustments, that same place would only be about $130-150K today. It was built on a blighted empty lot.

We could legally do this in the core of the city, and we could do it for multiple properties.

Here is a video of the project;

Bike Trail Public Works Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Parks and Rec Transportation

Denver, CO sees measurable results from incentivizing E-Bikes

l3wis 4Comments

While many people have told me to get off my high-horse about helping low income folks with an E-Bike leasing program, Denver has found that it has measurable results;

Researchers at Portland State University are tracking 65 programs nationwide that are active or that have been approved to help people get on e-bikes, either through subsidies or loaning a bike. California plans to launch a statewide program next year backed by $10 million.

E-bikes, which have a motor and battery to propel riders, can cost about $2,000, putting them out of reach for many low-income families. Denver’s program has two tiers, with one that offers $400 to any city resident — an amount aimed at sweetening the deal for would-be buyers. For low-income residents, the second tier increases the voucher size to $1,200, a sum city officials say should make the bikes more widely affordable.

Two other elements of the program are designed to encourage buyers to use their bikes for transportation: a bonus of $500 for cargo bikes, which can carry children or a large load, while full-suspension mountain bikes used primarily for recreation aren’t eligible.

And after Denver tried this pilot program, guess what they found out;

A city survey found new e-bike riders were riding, on average, 26.2 miles per week, and that low-income buyers were riding about 32 miles per week. Respondents said they had replaced 3.4 car trips each week with bike rides.

“It’s so much faster,” said Rink, who commutes by e-bike. “It’s much less of a chore. There is an element of joy in riding the e-bike.”

I would agree, my main reason I like riding my E-Bike is because it is enjoyable, but if you look at the results of this successful program it is also equitable. I hope the new transportation board in Sioux Falls looks at this.

Donita Trump Noem Kristi Noem State Legislature

Three South Dakota Judges dismiss Noem’s airplane use complaint because they don’t know how to use Google

l3wis 14Comments

How many judges does it take to get rid of a complaint towards the governor?

I find it hysterical that three supposed well educated judges in our state don’t know the definition of ‘state business‘

The state Government Accountability Board dismissed a complaint Tuesday regarding Gov. Kristi Noem’s use of state aircraft, citing no sufficient legal definition of “state business.” 

Isn’t law prickly? Judges conveniently throw out a complaint saying a law doesn’t exist. So if that is true, how do thousands of state employees show up to work each day and know what to do if a legal definition of state business doesn’t exist?

Game wardens could argue fishing all day with a state patrol boat is ‘state business’. Or a highway patrol officer could give UBER rides during their down time. Why not? There is NO definition of state business. And do you trust this legislature to fix it? They are still trying to figure out what the definition of ‘elected representative’ means.

When out legislative process fails we go to the judicial branch for clarity. Senator Nesiba points that out;

In October, Nesiba said the current law allows the attorney general or a state’s attorney discretion to look at “state business” and what it means. 

I guess these judges are struggling with defining the state’s legal definition of ‘state business’

Noem has faced scrutiny for a number of her uses of state aircraft, including flights from Custer and back again during the weekend of her daughter’s 2019 wedding at Custer State Park. Noem has also used a state airplane to attend several political functions in other states.

If you do a five second Google search you will find this handy piece of information;

Official state business or “state business” means any activity conducted in conformance to these rules and directed and controlled by a state agency to advance the lawful policies and purposes of the agency.

I don’t have a fancy law degree or a judgeship under my belt, but I am pretty sure flying your nephew to your Daughter’s Jewish Gun Rights CPAC Wedding extravaganza isn’t the definition of ‘state business’. Maybe if the 4th judge decided not to recuse themself the 4 of them could have took turns typing the definition into the Google search engine?

Daycare SF City Council SF School Board Member SF School District Sioux Falls

City of Sioux Falls passing community centers over to the SF School District

l3wis 5Comments

During the informational meeting today, the Parks Department proposed turning over the community centers to the SFSD for a after school program.

Councilor Merkouris questioned how this was concocted behind closed doors without input from a majority of the council and school board. He didn’t put it that way and was little more clever and asked how the SFSD can send out notifications for this program’s enrollment before the council or school board approved this.

The SFSD and the Parks Department tried to tie in future proposed indoor rec and pool centers. So are they proposing the SFSD take over the Midco Aquatic center? Yankton Trail Park? If you are trying to justify these indoor rec centers, then justify them for city public use not for supplementing the SFSD after school programs.

I agree this is needed, but I am with Rich, why wasn’t our policy body, the council, working on this? I often question what the purpose of our council is if the mayor’s office is molding policy and sponsoring it on the agenda. Might as well just put eight tic-tac-toe playing chickens on the dais, probably make better decisions 🙂

Councilor Starr questioned if the city will be saving any money? It doesn’t appear that way, it looks like we will still be providing funding since the city will still have use of the community centers on some occasions.

While I agree the SFSD should be sponsoring this program, I’m not sure it is the responsibility of city coffers (sales taxes) to help with this. I have been a major proponent of Pre-K education and public funding of it, but that should come from property taxes, Federal grants and mostly state coffers. We have a child care crisis in this city and country, no denying it, but we need to direct funding from the correct coffer. When I have to drive over 6″ ice ruts down my residential street, I’m not wondering why the city isn’t funding child care, I’m wondering why they are not spending my sales taxes on the most basic of needs like road maintenance.

Downtown Sioux Falls Property Taxes SF City Council Sioux Falls Taxes

Downtown Sioux Falls BID tax almost doubled due to typo in ordinance

l3wis 6Comments

I am not surprised this happened. Over the past decade I have watched the integrity of the legal descriptions in ordinances deteriorate substantially and it seems almost weekly the council is amending some mistake or typo (Item #96);

This would have been quite the boo-boo.

This past year the Building Services manager had to apologize to the city council for screwing up on a fee adjustment that wasn’t caught by the council or attorney’s office but by a contractor.

The BID Tax increase was deferred because a couple of DTSF business owners cried. I don’t see any amendments and I don’t expect any tonight, this will pass easily. The Billionaire Italians bitching about this increase can afford it, oh, and will DTSF hang some damn xmas lights at Sunshine already!

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