South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

Greg Neizert

Downtown Sioux Falls Greg Neitzert SF City Council Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls City Councilor Neitzert’s unfinished business

l3wis 7Comments

Last night during the City Council meeting there were quite a few accolades going towards Greg for his work on updating the Audit Committee ordinance. I would agree, he has put a lot of time into it.

But over the past year Greg has failed to follow through with a number of things he had told me at one time he was ‘working on’ only to find out from other councilors he dropped the issues.

The first one was overturning Rolfing and Erpenbach’s horrible ordinance that would require runoffs in council races. As I understand it another councilor took up that and it will be coming soon to repeal the ordinance and move it back to getting a plurality (34%).

The other was Downtown noise ordinance changes and a possible study. I haven’t heard a peep about this for well over 6 months. It is pretty obvious to most that the Downtown noise levels are a lot higher then the rest of the city (just with the trains alone). This seriously needs to be looked at with more development downtown and the Levitt Shell going in.

So why has Neitzert dropped the ball on these things? I’m not sure, but I have a feeling a few ‘elites’ in the Downtown development community got to him. Not sure why he backed off of Rolfing’s horrible ordinance.

Developers Development Greg Neitzert Planning Commission Platting Fees SF City Council Sioux Falls

Are Developers paying too much in Platting Fees? Absolutely NOT!

l3wis 6Comments

If anyone has been paying too much for NEW infrastructure and development, it has been the tax payers of Sioux Falls. When the 2nd Penny sales tax was raised to a full penny over a decade ago to fund infrastructure expansion, the promise was developers would put in 40-60% into that fund in platting fees. That hasn’t happened, not even close. In fact, taxpayers at one point were putting in over 10x more into that fund then the developers.

Well apparently some developers are now crying the platting fees are too much (about $20K per acre on vacant lots in undeveloped areas). Sioux Falls City Councilor Greg Neitzert talked about it in a recent post on his Facebook page. He seemed to be sympathizing with the developer because they used the tired old excuse that they pass those prices to the consumer of the new development. Well duh. The consumer is getting brand new sewer, water, and roads, why shouldn’t they pay the cost? How is charging me extra in sales taxes fair? What do I get out of it except higher taxes and water/sewer rates?

In about 50% of US cities with populations of 25K or more they charge the developer a 100% of the cost of new development infrastructure, so current users are not subsidizing new growth. This makes sense, because as I have often argued, new growth without a plan to pay for it, makes no sense. Slow growth that is properly funded is fiscally responsible to taxpayers. When developers don’t have enough workers to build their developments, that should tell us that maybe the ‘growth’ isn’t needed. Who are you building and expanding for?

I think we should eliminate platting fees all together and have developers instead pay for the entire cost of new infrastructure. If the NEW development is really truly needed, it will pay for itself. That’s just common sense.

Greg Belfrage Greg Neitzert Mayor TenHaken SF City Council Sioux Falls

Belfrage continues to rant about a ‘Nothing Burger’

l3wis 1Comments

It’s been a week today since the last city council meeting, and Belf continues to rant about how councilor Neitzert was ‘supposedly’ treated after last week’s council meeting. Now he is complaining to the mayor. I asked about this ‘incident’ since I was not there. I usually try to leave the meetings before the end so I don’t have to talk to the elected officials. I figure if they can’t talk to me during the public forum, why should I talk to them afterwards? What I was told is that a constituent, who knows Neitzert very well and has a good relationship with him ‘jokingly’ said to him he was a ‘rubber stamper puppet’. I guess he didn’t take it as a joke until this person laughed and told him they were joking. I’m not sure if this is how it played out, but I find it really hard to believe someone would ‘visciously’ get in his face and say this to him after the meeting. But since Batman didn’t die this week, Belf had to dig up some fake controversy.

The mayor, also continues to claim Stehly was ‘misleading’ the public about the $300 a month statement. It was a sarcastic figure of speech. Get over it already. The mayor also knows very little about how we have historically funded infrastructure projects, he claims we have always used enterprise funds. Not true, that change occurred during the last administration because the mayor at that time wanted to free up the 2nd penny to spend on pleasure palaces. Some have even claimed that Bowlcut & Bucktooth did more for our roads. Not true. Our roads were rated around 70% Good to Fair (which is a good rating) when he came into office. We had the same rating when he left.

TenHaken also claimed that our city employees (mostly directors) do things with the highest integrity. I have often argued their integrity is only matched by those who lead them. When the former mayor was lying about the siding settlement with the help of Fiddle-Faddle, why didn’t any of these city directors come forward and blow the whistle? Wouldn’t this be considered having integrity? I have said all along, it is very similar to the movie ‘A Few Good Men’. The city employees and mostly directors follow the orders of their leader, whether it is right or wrong. That is why I have had very little faith in how this sewer plant was ‘planned’.

Developers Development Downtown Sioux Falls Greg Neitzert Legacy Developments SF City Council Sioux Falls Village on the River

Councilor Neitzert says people had ‘Moronic’ arguments against parking ramp

l3wis 11Comments

The the Sioux Falls City council got a presentation (FF: 33:0o) update on the Village on the River project at the informational meeting.

When talking about the costs associated with the parking ramp portion of the project, the city engineers(?) admitted that they had to put in a special foundation to support the ramp and hotel.

As we have argued from the beginning the ramp is costing more, not because of the number of spaces or size of spaces but because we would be footing the bill for the special foundation for the hotel.

Councilor Neitzert claimed that some people (I assume other councilors, blogs and the media) had ‘moronic’ & ‘dishonest’ arguments about cost per space and that it is costing more because of the special foundation.

Costs DOC: Site-costs

If there was anything ‘moronic’ about our arguments, it would be that Greg and the other councilors who voted for this boondoggle fiasco of a public private partnership didn’t listen to us when we told them the foundation was going to cost more due to the height and size of the hotel, not the parking ramp.

So who are the morons? Certainly not the councilors who voted against this project. They knew all along why it was going to cost so much, because the developer took us to the cleaners.

Also, councilor Brekke asks why the developer for hotel portion doesn’t have a performance bond. Funny, the administration didn’t have an answer.

« Previous Page — Next Page »

You Missed

1st Amendment Downtown Sioux Falls Mayor TenHaken Sioux Falls The Link

Mr. Mayor, we need to have a discussion about addiction and bigotry

1st Amendment Bike Trail Downtown Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Parks and Rec

Peeps still complaining about E-Bikes

1st Amendment Elections SF City Council Sioux Falls

Where we stand on the city election

1st Amendment Larry Rhoden Mayor TenHaken Paul Ten Haken Riverline District Sioux Falls

UPDATE IV: A Generational Change? LOL!