As I have complained about in the past, it rubs me the wrong way that the Sioux Falls Planning staff recommends approval or denial of items on their agenda. It is the job of the Planning Commission to study the merits of a proposal from the information staff provides, it is NOT the job of public employees to recommend approval. Layout the plan, show the compatibility than let the Planning Commission decide based on the information.
While zoning and development in general is one thing, a massive 20 year, multi-million dollar tax rebate is totally different.
The Planning Commission can deny this proposal simply based on the fact that we don’t really know if the TIF will be beneficial or not. Denying the TIF would simply mean the PRIVATE developer would have to go back to the drawing board, the citizen taxpayers would not be harmed one iota if this was denied. In fact I would go step further and say that approving this TIF would be harmful to the 100% property tax paying citizen of our city because we would have to pay more in taxes to prop up this private venture.
I still think the city council needs to pass an ordinance forbidding planning staff or any public employee (that is hired, not elected) from recommending approval of endeavors that benefit private business. It’s unethical, if not highly suspect.
Next week’s City Council meeting agenda item concerning the Canterbury – Paddington development is bringing up ethical concerns. (Watch the fiery exchange at the last planning meeting, items 5B-C). The adjacent property owners wondered why the planning department and planning commission ignores it’s own ordinances. The short answer; MONEY & GREED. The only reason the SFPC gave (and their typical answer when big money development rolls up to the podium at these meetings) is they own the land they can do what they want to. Sounds great, I think I will get started on my nuclear reactor in my backyard this summer – neighbors be damned. But make sure you put up a sign warning about bees in your yard! You know, those naturally occurring insects that provide life giving pollination.
It appears there will at least two conflict of interest issues which might be raised and at least two recusals may likely be needed.
Mayor TenHaken’s Next Generation Leadership PAC has Joel Dykstra involved in the management of the campaign / PAC organization. Joel will be asking for a RE-ZONE and PRELIMINARY SUBDIVISION PLAN approval from the city council after the Planning Commission already approved it.
Councilor Selberg works for Van Buskirk Companies. The company was involved turning this development into a cluster to begin with by not finishing a promised road in the beginning of this development.
As we research more business connections, we see potential conflicts and believe full disclosures with recusals are required. Hopefully Marsh and Pauly will be recusing themselves next Tuesday on this item. If they don’t there could be legal and ethical ramifications from the adjacent property owners. We will see if they do the right thing.
Presentation on the transit situation. I have not got an update on what happened at the meeting on Monday, but I hear they have been having troubles getting a contract with a technology contractor.
Item #7, Approval of Contracts, another $700K to Pavilion. This place is constantly bleeding money. I heard recently one of the main reasons they have been able to break attendance records is because they would put on a frequent FREE event at the arts center. Imagine that, letting people in for FREE would increase attendance. Who knew? Maybe they should try that – wait.
Item #29, Deferred license for C-Store by Dudley House. I’m not sure how this will go. You know my feelings, we should not have allowed the shelter to be built at that location.
Item #36, Williquors is applying for a a delivery license. I wonder if other liquor stores have this? For instance, when you order grocery delivery from Hy-Vee can you get a bottle to?
Items #45-47, 2nd Reading, Ordinance. This is the Railyard Flats purchase. I find it interesting that the name of the developer and the project has been left off the agenda description. Why?!
Item #50, 1st Reading, Ordinance. Here we go, the first of a series of bonds for the water reclamation plant upgrades. Isn’t it fun watching the city borrow millions of dollars, it gives me kind of a tingly warm feeling inside. NOT!
Item #51, 1st Reading, Ordinance. Here we go with farting around with our old skool system of liquor licensing. Even with a reduced price, it really still leaves no room for family businesses to compete. It think the city should take a more proactive approach and lobby the legislature to change the system, and the Lincoln and Minnehaha County Commissions should jump on board to.
Item #57, City will approve a preliminary plan for Sanford Sports Complex expansion. I wonder if they want to put up any more nets?
Item #58, Annexation agreement. I find it a little ironic that the city would choose to make this the last agenda item on a very long meeting. Remember when they wanted to shove public input to the end of the meetings because ‘business’ needed to be taken care of with ‘business’ first? Funny how these things work.
To tell you the truth, I couldn’t answer this question, I post this out of curiosity;
The City of Sioux Falls, SD, requests formal bids for Minnehaha Country Club and The Country Club of Sioux Falls Pond Improvements.
Now I know the city has helped with retention and detention ponds in the past on private property, but I’m NOT sure how the costs are worked out with the property owners. I’m really kind of clueless how that works. But I find it interesting that the city would be using decorative course ponds as detention ponds. I guess you are killing two birds with one stone. But also remember, these are private recreational clubs who benefit from having those ponds. It reminds me of the massive levees we built with Federal and local tax dollars conveniently along the country clubs.
Hopefully someone from the city will explain how this all works.
I’m going to break his comment up into pieces since it is kind of long, and I will add my commentary. This is from Planning Commission member Larry Luetke responding to a post Councilor Stehly had on FB about the Bunker Ramp;
Larry Luetke I really think there is more to this story. The city cuts off communication with their partners two weeks before their deadline of 30 days to respond to changes with the project. It is stated in the contract that the city must respond within the 30 days. Either ok with the change, a modification or build what they were supposed too. There was no response back to them and contract was cut. It is fine if you don’t agree with the company that got it but there was a contract that was signed. Which puts us at citizens liable. Reading through the contract I don’t see where the city will win this one (I am not a lawyer). Which will put us liable for a lot of stuff beyond the 1.5 million that is short.
I’m with Larry on this one (I am also not a lawyer) but I do agree that modifying a contract is NOT unheard of, and when you cut off communication early, some wonder if something else was going on behind the scenes (not like that ever happens in city government 🙂
I think what is best for us is to allow the modifications to the project and allow the developer to start building. The lawsuit will cost us so much more.
He is absolutely correct, but we should have never taken out the bonds to begin with, and we should have halted this until we had substantial proof that the investment dollars were there from the developers. All we got was a lousy piece of paper that basically amounted to a IOU note in your piggy bank similar to when one of your older siblings stole from you.
Once finished it will bring in sales tax revenue and property tax to the city and county. Currently as a parking ramp it will pay no sales tax, no property tax and we will collect a minimal amount of parking fees.
As taxpayers, I never thought we would make much on this anyway, completed or NOT. This is why the city needed the 2nd Penny for collateral, because like most other projects we have bonded for over the past 20 years, we have had to have the 2nd Penny pay the mortgage. We have a very solid track record of multiple projects that will NEVER pay for themselves, such as the Pavilion, Events Center, MAC, Orpheum, etc.
I feel that it is our best interest in allowing the developer to move forward with their project. Some questions I would ask our city officials. If there was a meeting at one of the country clubs about another downtown hotel project in which a person said that we need to keep this quiet for a couple of weeks (which is the same time frame of when the city was not responding to their partner). Also a rumor is that the hotel project that I was just talking about was also in question of not being done because of the Village on the River project would be finished first and the other hotel would saturate the downtown hotel market. So because of that a certain project downtown would not move forward. The information I just stated is third hand but really has made me question what the real issue of why the city did not respond to their partner Village on the River.
I have no idea what project Larry is talking about, but if I was going to bet my ass on a guesstimation it would be the hotel and convention center Sioux Steel in partnership with Lloyd is proposing on that redevelopment project. But at this point, just pure speculation.
Also based on the contract the contractor is the one responsible for the performance bond. What I have heard from a partner of the developer is that this project is still a go with the modifications once the city agrees to their modifications. With the modifications they have more hotel rooms then proposed even without the extra two stories. Just as a disclaimer I have nothing to do with this project but feel based on my research and hear say we as citizens will be the burden of costs if we don’t allow this project to move forward.
Well, I hate to break it to you Larry, but the taxpayers were and are getting stiffed on this project either way. We were never going to get the parking spots we needed publicly, we paid too much for the spaces and foundation, the lease was a steal, and it is being built in the wrong place.
I will stay with my original emotions on this project – it was a bad idea out of the gate and should have NEVER even made it to a city council agenda. Thanks to Mayor Bucktooth & Bowlcut, another money sucking project he cooked up that is screwing over the constituents.
We have presentations on Microblading & The 3rd Phase of the River Greenway Project. This should be interesting to see how they will spend around $10 million on this project.
Item #7, Approval of Contracts, apparently it costs $79K to design and manage the construction of a very small Dog Park Downtown. I think I need to get into the dog park design business.
Fire Chief Goodroad also provides some information on what the design process will include for the public safety training center;
The Architectural Services will provide programming services and final space requirements for the following: • Main Classroom/Office Building • High Rise Training (Burn Tower) • 2-Story Training Building • 2-Story Mixed Use Training Building • Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) • Hazmat/Rail • Outdoor Live Fire Props • Propane Fuel Farm • Police/Fire Emergency Vehicle Operations Course (EVOC) (high and low speed) • Outdoor Classroom • Tactical Gun Range • Site Development and Landscape
Item #69, 2nd Reading, Bee Keeping ordinance. I think will have the support of at least 5 councilors. But it will be interesting to see what amendments get tacked on.
Item #74, 1st Reading, Clarifying the duties of the City Attorney as advisor to certain citizen boards. While I support the change, it should have been put on the ballot in the Spring for citizens to vote on it.
Item #79, Resolution to increase the funding for the Bunker Ramp by $1.5 million. It’s too bad this is all the way at the end of the meeting. I suspect the discussion about this should be HOT. I think they have at least 5 votes to pass this, in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if this actually gets 7 votes. Hopefully though we will get some answers as to what this is for, but I’m guessing we will just get a lot of runaround with directors telling councilors during questioning, “I’ll get that info for you tomorrow and email it.” (so the public can’t see it tonight before it passes). I have often thought that a vote should be automatically deferred one week if city staff can’t provide an answer in the public meeting, or at least try to find it before the vote takes place. What’s the point in answering a question after the passage of legislation?
Item #80, Resolution to appoint citizen board members. The mayor gets to appoint two members to the State Theatre Board (since we THE TAXPAYERS gave them money). I can feel the warmth of the popcorn already.
The killing floor continues at the CRC meetings. They will take up several items including;
• Removing Mayor from Council, Super Majority to approve bonds & plurality or ranked choice voting. I suspect they will all be killed by the CRC. In the graphic below you will see the timeline they are working with in this slaughter of good legislation and changes to the Charter.
Item #6, Approval of Contracts. I find it interesting that the city is going to pay $300K for a school park? I have no idea what this plan is or if it is in coordination with the school district. Hopefully we will have more details at the meeting. It also looks like the money is JUST for ‘planning’ the site. We are also dumping another $45K into the indoor pool for something called ‘window fans’. I remember when they were designing the place, we were told they would take extra care in ensuring we would use durable materials and equipment to keep maintenance costs down. I find it interesting that after only a couple of years we are installing new equipment.
Item #35, 1st reading, Renewing franchise agreement with Midco.
Item #36-37, 1st Readings, Kirby downtown dog park and gifting agreement of $600K.
Item #5B, Bob’s Chicken Casino. Planning department recommending denial due to neighborhood opposition.
Item #5C, Another casino on North Cliff, while some of the neighbors oppose, the Planning department recommends approval.
Item #5E, It’s a Pizza party! They want to build a pizzeria in a residential neighborhood by USF, they would serve beer. Some neighbors are opposed to alcohol in the neighborhood.
Item #5I, Looks like the Sanford Sports Complex is considering building a baseball stadium. First time I heard about this.
Item#2, A-C, The city plans on some rezones to create a bunch of detention ponds.
Item#2D, okay, I’m no home designer, but in order to qualify as a ‘Twin Home’ shouldn’t the houses be attached to each other? Just look at the plans, only the garages share a wall. Weird.
Item#2E, I guess Lloyd Companies bought the old Bowden Youth Center and are going to covert into apartments and offices.
Item#5B, A property owner is trying to convert the old Bob’s Café building into a Casino. Not only is it a bad location next to neighborhood homes, we don’t need anymore casinos in this town. When is the state legislature finally going to repeal this scourge on our society?
Item#5D, you know the house across from Avera that Avera said needed be torn down? John Koch is converting into apartments for temporary nurses for Avera, and Avera is loaning 3 parking spots to the complex. Funny how these things work out.
Item#5F, another casino, this time at Lake Lorraine. What retail mega-plex in Sioux Falls wouldn’t be complete without a casino! This one the planning department says is OK. Besides, it’s close to an assisted living center, they shouldn’t have to take an Uber or Paratransit to gamble.
Item#5G, the old Shopko on East 10th is becoming a car lot. I know, shocking!
Item#7, The Planning Department came up with a new flowchart to let us know how redevelopment works.
Planning Director Eckhoff is asking for an advisory opinion on Thursday, July 25, from the Board of Ethics if it is appropriate for him to continue to serve on the board (he has for over 8 years, and receives a stipend). He says he will forgo the stipend. (Last page of document)
IMO, even if Jeff forgoes the stipend, I don’t think it is appropriate for him to serve on the board, especially as the planning director of the state’s largest city. This is an easy one for the BOE.
I’ve been hearing Jeff has been doing a great job for the city and works well with constituents and councilors, unfortunately he should have known to resign this position before accepting the city job – it is a major conflict.
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