The short answer is NO, and probably why they skirted this move administratively instead of bringing it in front of the council where DTSF businesses could air their grievances in the public square. I supported this based on 1) That DTSF (the org) reassured the council that DT businesses support this* 2) it will ONLY be on Phillips and you can still park for free in the ramps (which I think will gradually be used more due to the Saturday metering on Phillips).
*At first glance I am hearing that only about half of DTSF businesses support this, the rest are ‘wait and see’. This of course is from random conversations I had with DTSF business owners, workers in DTSF and some city staff. Nothing scientific.
I have no idea what kind of support it has.
Which brings us to the crux of the issue. Besides being the council’s duty to vote on new taxes and fees, and a First and Second reading would have allowed people who own businesses DTSF and work DTSF to share their opinions. Maybe most of them support it? I don’t know, and we never will because the process was not followed and the council, once again, allowed a precedent by the mayor’s office. Tsk! Tsk! I sometimes wonder if Trump is our shadow mayor.
Update: I talked to some attorneys about this and they all disagreed with me on the tax issue. One attorney said it was a ‘government services fee’ basically you are leasing the space from the city so it is a fee. But they all agreed with me that the council really should have approved it in a 1st and 2nd reading so there would have been a public hearing before its implementation.
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When I saw the story yesterday that they were going to start metering on Saturdays I wondered when the city council approved this. Well, they didn’t because they did not have to. According to charter, ordinances 77.080-77.082 gives the parking director and strangely the city engineer the authority to determine when they can charge these fees. A few months ago when they banned monster trucks in DTSF the council did discuss Saturday metering but never gave a timeline or even voted on it, so I was expecting a vote this Spring. But I would argue that it DOES NOT give the director the authority to make this move;
The director of public parking facilities shall establish the hours during the day and night when parking meters or gates must be used and when the time limitations shall be effective,
Notice it says the director can determine the TIMES during a specific day, but it DOES NOT give him the authority to pick the days of collection, which he did here, SATURDAY.
I would encourage an attorney with some free time to go DTSF and park at a meter on a Saturday, receive a ticket then challenge that ticket in court by saying the director didn’t have the authority to pick a NEW day to start metering.
There is also the labor involved. Obviously they had to hire some new people to watch the meters. Was this in the budget? Did the councilors approve that? I doubt it.
This is a MAGA move by our Mayor. You don’t have the authority to start TAXING constituents on a new day without the approval of the policy body which makes taxation decisions, because as Staggers once said, you can call it a ‘parking fee’ but let’s call it what it really is; a ‘tax’.
The parking division also has a revenue issue putting most of their yearly earnings into bond payments for that color fart bunker ramp. The parking division needs more money, and they are coming for yah. I have contended that the city make ALL parking DTSF FREE, 24/7 except meters on Phillips, I would have them running non-stop, 7 days a week, and I would charge $5.00 an hour. If you want people coming DTSF to shop, may I suggest more FREE parking in ramps.
The city’s parking ramp on Mall Avenue also remains a prospective redevelopment site.
“It’s not costing the taxpayers a dime to have it sit there, so we’re not in a huge rush to have something,” TenHaken said. “The time will come and the market will change, and it’s still a valuable piece of land. We still get interest and inquiries.”
Maybe it was Poops attempt at humor at the end of the year, but it’s not funny, and it is definitely NOT FREE. In fact a major chunk of the parking department’s revenue goes towards the bond payments, there is also maintenance and paying workers to maintain the facility. I figured a few years ago about 60-80% of the years total revenue in parking goes towards the bonds and maintenance on this ONE facility which takes away from other parking upgrades downtown.
It’s costing us . . . a lot.
Poops knows he f’d this up and he could have stopped it but he cowered to the bondsters and gave in (because he is an extremely poor leader). He could have gained support on the council to cancel the bond but he did what he normally does, ignore the gorilla in the room hoping they will go away. Many want to blame Huether, but old elbow assaulter didn’t sign off on the bonds, Poops did. This is all on him. I still laugh at the presser he gave with Lamont saying he was good for the investment because he gave the city a letter saying so (a last will and testament on a bar napkin would have more legal precedent). Poops does everything by the seat of his pants and wonders why they turn out the way they do, then lies about the result. Here’s the deal, PAUL, we are paying dearly for your F’up, DEARLY, but instead of taking the blame you just lie. When you call yourself a Christian, I just shake my head. I attended Catholic and Lutheran services growing up, and I never recall a minister or priest saying it was okay to lie as long as you are covering up a screwup. You are a fraud.
Would they ever work with the city again on a project? They’d never completely count out the idea, the artists said.
But, Hernandez added, “the experience was pretty horrible.”
These fine young artists aren’t the first and certainly won’t be the last to suffer the consequences of ‘horrible’ city policies and leadership and blatant CENSORSHIP.
There is also another concern. Do we have RACIST elites in this community influencing city hall policy?
Speaking of suffering, the city has asked the courts to dismiss the Federal housing discrimination lawsuit. Just your typical dragging out the clock games they play. Of course, we know that is likely NOT going to happen.They have an incredibly solid case.
We could argue about that until we are blue in the face, but when you have administration that is very bad with money it usually means some kind of corruption is going on, and his circus monkeys called the city council (no matter who they are) go along with it.
In just a few short years they have managed to bilk the taxpayers out of millions to help and benefit friends and family, here is a short trip down the memory lane of corruption (the list originally was only 6 items, but once I started discussing with others the list has grown, and I can’t even discuss stuff behind the scenes);
• Creation of the PRIVATE Parks Association (This group was started so VIPs in Sioux Falls can use their donations as a tax write-off. Don’t care about that, rich people are constantly finding ways to not pay their fair share, oh well. But what is frustrating is not the donations but controlling the narrative and forcing the public to take on their pet projects and help fund them. Parks amenities should be a directive of the public NOT rich donors. We will take your money and inform the IRS, but we should really let the public decide.)
FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND CORRUPT!
• Buying the Sanford Wellness Center (So we bought a failing facility from Sanford so we can subsidize it?)
FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND CORRUPT!
• Jacobsen Plaza (Originally a $4 million dollar project, turns into a $16 million dollar project for a facility NO ONE in the community was asking for. I literally haven’t heard one single person tell me they want this, most just say, “Another Parks White Elephant like Great Bear.”)
FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND CORRUPT!
• Great Bear (We’ve thrown millions at this facility over the past few years, and for what? To be open a couple of weeks in January? It’s time to make this a FREE natural winter park and let people use it when they want to and sell off all the lifts and snowmaking equipment).
FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND CORRUPT!
• Golf Course Clubhouse (Originally just a simple expansion of the current Elmwood clubhouse and a cart shed replacement has turned into a country club clubhouse project. This is a modest muni course, a pole barn would do with some nice landscaping. But the council approved it anyway.)
FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND CORRUPT!
• Massive subsidies for indoor recreation (The MIDCO is subsidized $1.2 million a year, the wellness center will probably be double that, and the sad part is you can’t walk into these facilities for free. I said we need to start focusing on FREE recreation.)
FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND CORRUPT!
• Delbridge Museum coverup (Initially lying to the public then trying to cover it up about the conditions of the animals. I have said we are missing a massive opportunity here, we could build all new dioramas that surround the aquarium and we would have one of the most unique exhibits in the world! But that takes vision.)
FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND CORRUPT!
• Sixth Street Bridge ($10 million cost overrun to bailout a whiny developer.)
FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND CORRUPT!
• Bunker Ramp (This is a gigantic mess and I just found out more about this debacle recently – more to come on this!)
FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND CORRUPT!
• TIFs (handing them out like Booty Prizes, and now to developers out of state.)
FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND CORRUPT!
• Censoring the Bunker Ramp mural (They said the mural was racist and then the Smithsonian picked the piece. I have said that the mayor and his prosperity gospel folks he runs with are culturally retarded).
FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND CORRUPT!
• Riverline District (Besides the fact there are massive conflicts of interest with the brokering with this deal and other developments the public should NOT be paying for this, and they especially shouldn’t be buying property with Entertainment Tax money.)
FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND CORRUPT!
• Lying about income tax and IM 28 (This will never happen, if this passes the legislature will just increase sales taxes on everything else. An income tax? Yeah, and monkeys will be flying out of my butt.)
• Dakota Scout and Legal Notices (So the full council new the investors and voted for this anyway hiding the information from the public. This isn’t about the money it’s about Paulson controlling the narrative).
FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND CORRUPT!
• Eliminating the Internal Audit (This is actually all on former councilor Jensen and screwing up managing council employees and allowing the mayor to hire the Audit Manager after she was LIKELY on probation with the council. Not sure if that is the case, but it is pretty easy to put 2 & 2 together.)
FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND CORRUPT!
• Ignoring the LGTB community (I could use a lot of colorful language, no pun intended, but I will just say, the queer community ain’t real impressed with Poops. It also has an economic impact. Many queers in this community own businesses and contribute to our bottom line. Acting like they don’t exist isn’t helping that relationship.)
FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND CORRUPT!
• Sustainability Report (After a group of volunteers spends months on this project the mayor’s policy advisor, the pumpkin recycler, shreds the document). There is also the economic impact of sustainability.
FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND CORRUPT!
• Homelessness (The mayor had a press conference today that didn’t solve a damn thing, I know, shocker. The Q & A I heard was quite spicy. A KELOLAND employee busted the mayor in a stat he pulled from his ass. The city needs to figure out how to manage the issue, NOT eliminate it. You will never end homelessness BUT with several measures, policies and ordinances and actual action you can manage the problem. This is what other cities have done, don’t look at it as a problem to SOLVE but something you can MANAGE. The mayor has also ignored the issue thinking it will just go away, that is NEVER a solution. There is also a fiscal impact, and where the city is dropping the ball. The downtown business district brings in a lot of revenue for the city, and with the struggling economy, inflation and now increased homeless traffic they are hurting, which hurts all of us including the homeless.)
FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND CORRUPT!
• Childcare (Not getting the business community to step up. Poops needs to use the bully pulpit to put his boot up the ass of large companies in this town and have them start subsidizing childcare. I don’t think tax dollars should be used on this, but you have to admit there is a massive labor market fiscal impact if we don’t solve this problem.)
FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND CORRUPT!
• Backdoor real estate deals (Not only did the mayor laugh all the way to the bank, it helped the buyer increase the value of properties around the one they purchased.)
FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND CORRUPT!
As you can see, not the best track record, and if we had media in this town with some historical knowledge they would be all over this. Some do, but most don’t.
Speaking of historical knowledge, I have also heard a rumor that city employee morale is way down, not just because of poor leadership by Poops, but because Millennial management has been quietly pushing out Boomers. Besides the fact that employment rules, regs and laws may be broken here due to age discrimination it is even more troubling that the city is ridding itself of city employees with historical knowledge. I often tell people when you eat out, ask to eat in the section of the oldest server they have. Pick a winner every time!
I think it is time to start discussing recall efforts, not only of the Mayor but of the entire Council. This crap is getting old.I encourage anyone who would like to join the effort to email me.
l3wis