This picture was taken in Worthing
UPDATE: HERE ARE THE DETAILS OF THE PIPELINE PROPOSAL
We don’t have time for no stinking oil pipelines!
I was partially confused yesterday at the city council informational meeting when I heard Councilor Erpenbach talk about an upcoming joint Minnehaha & Lincoln County commission meeting next week (I think Tuesday afternoon at Carnegie). The meeting will be an informational from the Dakota Access (Baaken pipeline) People.
As we have discussed in the past, the pipeline will be coming very close to the city and through Lincoln and Minnehaha counties. What shocked me was when Michelle didn’t seem to see the importance of the meeting when she said,
“We don’t have much influence over that . . . the PUC has to grant the permit.â€
While this is true the county commissions and the city council also have to approve zoning for these projects, and should be VERY involved with the process. For someone who calls herself a self-proclaimed ‘Government Nerd’ she better get to ‘Nerding Up’ on some of her job duties.
GOT TIFs?
Well it has been over two years, and no one has applied for a TIF (imagine that, record building permits in 2014-thank you hailstorms-and we did it without issuing one single TIF) As I have often pointed out, development in Sioux Falls will steam ahead, with or without TIF’s.
A Sioux Falls developer is seeking a tax increment financing (TIF) designation to build an 80-unit affordable housing complex next to Sunshine Foods downtown.
Legacy Development and Consulting Co. is seeking a TIF for a project it wants to construct at the northeast corner of Third Avenue and 13th Street, or just north across from Sunshine.
As we all know, I am not a fan of TIF’s, they take money out of the county for prosecuting criminals and money from public schools. But I will play the devil’s advocate on this one, using the criteria that TIF’s are mainly used to clean up blithed areas I am puzzled by this request. This seems like a pretty simple project, leveling a few buildings, tearing up a parking lot and slopping up some middle to lower income apartments. Seems like a very profitable venture for anyone with the capital to invest in this project. I see NO need for a TIF. If Legacy cannot get a bank loan to fund this, it’s not the TIF that is holding them back, it’s their credit rating.
Just when I couldn’t keep my conspiracy theories together, thinking Mike and Lloyd made a trip to the Antarctica of the Dakotas to invest in housing up there, this unique little story pops up (H/T – Red Angel);
Energy Transfer Partners LP of Dallas, Texas, says it expects to have the $3.7 billion, 1,100-mile Bakken Pipeline completed and in service by the end of 2016.
South Dakota Public Utilities Commission Chairman Gary Hanson said officials there first learned about the project from landowners three to four weeks before being contacted by company officials.
“At first it was very much a stealth pipeline type of a situation for us, because we heard about it from landowners who had been contacted by the company,” Hanson said. “We didn’t hear about it originally from the company itself, which is unusual.”
The pipeline would continue its diagonal route through South Dakota, passing near Redfield and Sioux Falls, and bisect Iowa before reaching its final destination in Patoka, Ill.
See, XL is probably dead in the water, they are looking at moving the pipeline to Canada. Now we have this new pipeline to contend with. But the fight with podunk farmers will probably be an easy one, and our push over PUC will also cave. Then comes Harrisburg and Sioux Falls. Lot’s of money to be made in land deals, and who could sell the city residents on such a deal? Well of course the best damn salesperson turned mayor we have ever seen (doesn’t hurt he is ooozing with transparency 🙁
See, he sold us another Walmart (maybe two) an events center, a tennis center (so his wife can play in winter) an indoor pool, etc., etc. What is stopping him on selling us a pipeline?
It will be fun to watch city leadership when it comes to developing this pipeline. Looks like it is time to wake up the petition gathering folks, this will probably be the biggest fight city hall has ever seen.
I knew this was going to explode in Republican’s faces;
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Republicans tried to force a quick decision and it backfired on them.
“If the Republicans care so much about the Keystone Pipeline they would not have narrowed the president’s options by putting it on the time frame that they did. They left him very little choice,” Pelosi said.
Did they think he would change his mind if he had to make a quick decision? Any fool can see the pipeline has no benefit to Americans, in fact, it could harm us more then anything.
As we have known all along, the Keystone pipeline won’t benefit Americans one iota. We take on the environmental risks so a Canadian company can sell oil to the Chinese. I commend Obama for delaying the pipeline, and Thune-Bag needs to shut his pie-hole about it.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VucRPHJtvGU&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]