After the Finance Director, Shawn ‘Fireball’ Pritchett put on his best performance to date to the city council Tuesday night supporting a property tax increase, some councilors were not buying it.
Why?
Well, because it’s strange that Fireball budgeted in the tax increase for 2026 before the council even approved it. I have no doubt the city council will pass this, either with 5-6 votes or a 4/4 tie with the mayor approving it. But what if the council votes this tax increase down? Then what? Well, the finance director would have to adjust the budget.
It is the council’s job to control the budget, and by charter they really are the ones supposed to be compiling it. So how does Fireball get away with budgeting for an assumed tax increase BEFORE the council approves that increase? Cart before horse. Reminds me of the Riverline promotion without a revenue source to pay for it. I guess I would have found the revenue first before pushing this forward. I would vote against this increase so Fireball has to do his job and actually put a budget together that focuses on fiscal restraint and not ‘assumed’ increases. I can’t believe we have 10 more months of this crap.
CITY NEEDS TO LIVESTREAM ALL PUBLIC MEETINGS ON YOUTUBE
The city’s agenda page is STILL broken after almost 16 years, just last night while watching the planning meeting it was screwing up. I sent this email to the entire city council, we will see what they do. I have been requesting this for several years with NO results;
Hello,
Trust me, with conversations with councilors current and past, I get your frustration with the video system on the city website, it started failing as Munson was leaving office and has never really been fixed since, and it appears it is getting worse. Several meetings over the past month have had video glitches. There is something you can do for a temporary/permanent fix. I would suggest keeping the current system so people can follow along the agenda, but for those who are only listening or watching the meetings they can also stream in YouTube. The benefit of the stream is it is FREE, in fact if you would put ALL of our public meetings on YouTube you would probably generate ad revenue from it. Also, almost every single local government in South Dakota uses YT to stream meetings, including the 2 local commissions and school board. The benefit is you can rewind the meeting at any time if you missed a speaker and the meeting is available for review IMMEDIATELY after the meeting ends. This is way past due. Now, I would assume that since the media department reports to the Mayor it is in his wheelhouse to get this fixed, but council meetings are under your review. My suggestion would be to pass an ordinance that requires the media department to live stream ALL public meetings. I would also give them 60 days to implement the YT stream in case they have to upgrade equipment or do some training (I learned how to make a YT video in 20 minutes). I also stress this needs to be in CHARTER, no handshake deals that get forgotten about in the next administration, I would even go a step farther and see if a council staffer can manage this and not even involve the media department.
As I said, way past due, and you can force the hand of the administration to comply by passing an ordinance. See, government can be easy sometimes, it only took 16 years.
Scott