City of Sioux Falls promotes property tax increases

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The city’s finance director is pushing for a property tax increase again this year. I found this proposal interesting considering the mayor is increasing the budget next year for pools. The city can only use the money for OPERATING expenses. So while they CANNOT spend the money on capital improvements they can use the money to fix potholes and pay lifeguards.

2022 Property Tax $84.9 M – 37%

2022 Assessed Value, 80% Residential, 37% Commercial

ASSESSED VALUE OF SINGLE-UNIT RESIDENTIAL PROPERTIES, $200K – $317.7K, 34%

As you can see, residential property taxes are the biggest chunk of property taxes paid. In other words we are OVERTAXING residential property owners to subsidize things like $25 million dollar parking ramps for condo dwellers.

When people talk about TIFs or rebates for large developers they claim there is this mysterious ROI, even though NO independent study has been done to show us what that ROI is. I would argue that a residential property owner actually has a higher ROI, besides the taxes they pay to help with street and curb and gutter improvements, they may hire a lawn care company or hire a contractor to do work to their property, creating actual jobs.

I have argued for a long time we have NO reason to increase property taxes each year because of natural growth. If we also started taxing commercial properties at their actual legal assessment (and not a reduced TIF assessment) we would also haul in millions in property tax revenue.

Once again, the city is sticking it to the little guy so the big guy has a small tax bill.

Shape Places rears it’s head

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Recently a prisoner transitional housing proposal came in front of the city council (Item #38). While the council moved it to 2nd reading, they seem to be opposed to approving the rezone to institutional from multi-family residential.

The problems are evident, changing from a regular apartment to a recovery home, buying the property BEFORE properly zoning it (the client in this case has pulled this song and dance before with other properties, so they KNEW exactly what they were doing, asking for forgiveness later, the oldest trick in the book).

While many have mentioned the sex offenders living at the facility, this is actually NOT a bad thing because 1) they would be supervised and 2) several unsupervised sex offenders already live in the neighborhood.

So what’s the problem? Shape Places, passed by the city council, and after opponents had a successful petition drive to repeal it, the voters also approved it. I helped a smidgen on the petition drive, and the ONLY real substantive change they wanted was to KEEP conditional uses in zoning (this gives the planning commission and city council the ability to put conditions on the rezone). Shape Places was stripped of this, so the Planning Commission and City Council really only have one option, approve the rezone and all the headaches that go with it, or DENY it which will likely leave this property as is, which is a dump.

If the council had the authority (before Shape Places) to put conditions on the rezone they could have worked with the property owner to at least make this a transitional, unsupervised housing (and that may be their plan moving forward).

As I tell people, the developers in town wanted this to ‘speed up the process’ or more like put things under the radar, the council passed it, and the voters passed it, it is what we have now.

The council CAN revisit Shape Places whenever they want to, and they have the power to modify it to re-allow conditional uses. I believe BOTH Minnehaha and Lincoln County Planning Commissions allow for conditional uses.

This probably happens more then we think, someone buys a property only to find out they are stuck with stringent zoning.

I support deregulation when it makes sense, but not giving our elected officials the ability to modify zoning on a case by case basis has really tied their hands.

Mayor TenHaken still pushing for full-time arts coordinator

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You already know my position on the matter, I don’t think we need one and instead could rely on a stakeholder board and a part-time consultant. But for the sake of the argument let’s say I agree with the Mayor that we need this position (I agree we need SOMETHING better than what we currently have). Don’t you think it is a little odd that we have finance running the health department and the IT department, we have decided to ‘job out’ out internal audit, and the police force has had major turnover since Thum has taken over (this is a good thing, because I think he is cleaning some of the cobwebs out). You also have to remember his Cultural Officer that he needed, she was never replaced after leaving. I think the council’s position of wait and see is a good one, and once we get the SFPD fully staffed with competent officers and directors in key departments then we can talk about finger painting.

THE CITY NEEDS A FULL-TIME OPEN MEETINGS COMPLIANCE OFFICER

So it happened again this week, their was a meeting that posted the incorrect agenda so an item got pushed to next month’s meeting (this happened at the Active Transportation Board meeting). Councilor Neitzert informed the board he wanted to be on the agenda to talk about E2’s but they didn’t bother reposting the agenda within the 24 hour window. While they did the right thing by postponing the item, they did the wrong thing by not posting it when they were told about it.

It is time the city had a full-time open meetings compliance officer that makes sure all agendas are posted on time and correctly. If we are depending on department heads to do this right, it is obviously not working.

‘Who is getting screwed, and how bad?’

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During public input tonight at the Sioux Falls City Council meeting, former Commissioner Robert Kolbe made the above statement that he said he took from Jim Abourezk’s memorial service.

I wasn’t quite sure where he was going with the testimony, but he ended with something like this;

‘You should take that barren wall you have downtown (bunker ramp?) and in the middle have a photo of the last four mayors and on top it would say ‘Sioux Falls is a great place to live . . .’ and under them it would say ‘In spite of them’.

As Kolbe leaves the podium Mayor Grunty says out loud into his microphone ‘Classy’.

I am starting to wonder what Poops has against former elected officials? Oh that’s right, they understand history (and probably don’t skip their afternoon naps so they are not a grumpy, grunting, mumbling chair at the meetings). I will start to get worried when he shows up to the meetings with a milk mustache and cookie crumbs on his shirt.

Every time I see the mayor do this, it seems he is trying to get a laugh out of councilor Jensen, which oddly reminds me of this scene;

Sioux Falls City Council Agenda, July 18-20, 2023

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The council will have a busy week of meetings touching on countless topics.

Operations Committee Meeting • 1 PM • Tuesday, July 18

Item C, Potential City Council Support Staff Addition

The council has been rumbling about adding staff for about a year. Instead of hiring a support staff person they should have done a national search for an Internal Audit Manager and reviewed just what current council staff does now. I don’t think the council has justification to add staff.

Informational Meeting • 4 PM • Tuesday, July 18

• Monthly financial report (it is interesting to see how tax collection has slowly been cooling over the past couple of months).

• Childcare crisis. I have often argued that if we implemented public Pre-K we would eliminate a good chunk of this issue. I also think that state government is going to have to start subsidizing some of these programs. There should also be an educational part to this of promoting ‘modest’ sized families. It seems in South Dakota we want people to have babies, we just don’t want to help them after they have arrived.

Regular Council Meeting • 4 PM • Tuesday, July 18

Item #6, Approval of contracts,

Sub-item, 1, $105K to continue the failed on-demand programming.

Sub-item, 2, Joint Participation Agreement for cooperative funding of The Link. You will notice that Avera is putting in a big chunk each year where the county is throwing a pittance at it. I’m hoping a city councilor pulls this item so we have a better understanding how this works.

Items 16-20, Special Assessment Rolls, I find it humorous the only time the city practices transparency and open government is when they list the names of PRIVATE property owners who are being assessed to fix PUBLIC property. There is absolutely NO reason to publish the actual names of the property owners. If someone wants to look up the property description on the County’s GIS, have at it. This information is NOT of high public importance.

Items 41-43, RESOLUTIONs IN SUPPORT OF THE CITY OF SIOUX FALLS, DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS’ APPLICATION FOR THE HOUSING INFRASTRUCTURE FINANCING PROGRAM (HIFP) GRANT FUNDING. This is probably the money the state has been sitting on for much to long.

Item 44, A RESOLUTION ADVISING AND GIVING CONSENT TO THE APPOINTMENT OF MEMBERS TO VARIOUS CITIZEN BOARDS. The good news is Jeff Barth got appointed to the Museum Board and the Planning Commission has appointed a 9th member, Mike Gray;

Mike Gray

  • Over seven years in economic development.
  • Employed with the Sioux Falls Development Foundation.
  • Over two years of experience on the Zoning Board of Adjustment

While I have NO problem with Mike serving on the Zoning Board since it deals mostly with private property issues and zoning one scratches their head a bit about having a SFDF employee on the planning board. It just appears like a huge conflict of interest all the way around. Now if we can just get this new member to show up to the meetings and vote! I remember the good old days when you would look up at the planning commission’s dais and see 9 smiling faces! I did recently contact the Planning Chair about some of the issues with recusals, conflicts and quorums and she assured me she would be looking into it.

Active Transportation Board • 8:30 AM • City Hall, Commission Chambers • July 19, 2023

Hopefully we will get an update about what is happening with rec trail restrictions. As I understand it councilors Cole and Neitzert are working on a fix that would include allowing E2s and a speed limit (there is NOT one currently in statute).

Special City Council Meeting – Budget Address • Thursday, July 20, 2023, at 3:00 PM • Carnegie Town Hall

I guess the mayor is running out of venues, he is returning to the public square to give an address. Where do a I RSVP for my free juice and bearclaw?