Yesterday the Soukup family proposed a donated park that will have fishing ponds
See the full presentation here
It still has to be approved by council and we must also realize it won’t be cheap to maintain, but will be something nice within our city limits. I’m kinda on the fence about it, but the Soukup family is very generous, so I see this as a good thing (even though there is a million places to fish in the region).
Tonight’s informational meeting for the Sioux Falls city council could get a little ‘dicey’ to say the least. The audit that councilor Staggers asked for last summer has finally came out, and the results are astonishing. City Hall has done it’s best to stall the audit, saying Staggers’ request had political motives and what good would it be to know those amounts. As you can see below, there is a reason City Hall has been delaying the audit.
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Consulting fees jumped almost a 100% in two years and the most shocking is professional services jumped from $16 million to $34 million in 3 years. This is appalling on two fronts. First off the city should be spending less, not more, especially in this economy and I don’t care how out of control inflation may be, there is no excuse whatsoever for a $16 million dollar jump over a three year period. It is pretty obvious that there is a lot of hogs at the trough of city hall and Munson has the feeding pail. I hope Staggers takes them to task tonight over the out of control spending, we’ll see if Northside Davey has the gonads to show up to the meeting tonight.
At least four of these people will be gone in 2010 – I can’t freaking wait.
Isn’t it funny how headlines can be deceiving?
Editorial: Forum on local economy fills a need
Kudos to council member for offering chance to exchange ideas
So I’m expecting the AL to go on and on about the brilliance of the master planner Greg Jamison, then I get to this part of the editorial;
It’s not as though this gathering will effect any immediate change in our economy. It’s not going to answer any of the lingering questions about how long and how deep this recession might be.
Exactly. So what was the point of the meeting again?
But the conversation, the suggestions, the discussion about future needs was productive nonetheless.
What?! You don’t think that business leaders in Sioux Falls are already talking? I hope so. This meeting was all show and no go. Real change occurs when the council and mayor write policy, vote on it and put it into place – not shooting the shit over coffee and rolls. My experience with sitting on boards in Sioux Falls is that all the good (progressive) ideas get thrown out the window and little guy always loses in the end. I do agree the meeting was a good idea in concept, but with anything involving public officials it should have been recorded and put on record, maybe it was, but I have not see it on the city’s website yet. When we talk about real change and accountability we should hold our public officials feet to the fire and put them on public record when they open their mouths and share ideas, even in a open discussion – otherwise, what’s the point?
The two-hour discussion was united on the principle that even in a national economic recession, Sioux Falls needs to press forward with infrastructure improvements, an event center, river corridor development, affordable housing and strategic planning for economic development.
They just can’t talk about Sioux Falls and growth without getting a plug in about the Event Center. Tell you what, the discussion should have centered around how all these city business ‘leaders’ intend to raise money for it – because you ain’t bilking the regular joe this time for your playground.
“Part of the reason for doing it like this is there is no place to hide. Accountability is here,” he said. “I’ve got my marching orders.”
I guess Greg’s father, General Jamison is back! Hey, Bob, stay retired, your old skool trash talk hasn’t been missed at the council meetings. I was puzzled by the ‘accountability’ statement though. Were you voting on something Greg that the public didn’t know about? Shooting the shit with a bunch of community business leaders is hardly ‘accountability’. Stepping out of votes when you have clear conflicts of interest is.
City Councilor Bob Litz said he was intrigued by a proposal to encourage real estate projects by incrementally stepping in real estate taxes on new buildings over five years, instead of imposing the full tax rate at once.
That’s a great idea Bob, make young families with new homes pay a majority of property taxes! They can afford it! And let the developers trickle down their savings to the rest of us! If I have to pay the full tax rate as a new homeowner, so do developers. I don’t get this giving tax breaks to the wealthiest people in our city in hopes they will trickle down low wages to us. I suppose that was discussed at the meeting to . . .
Curt Everson, president of the South Dakota Bankers Association, said that one way to increase capital for local investment is for government entities in the state to deposit their money in South Dakota banks.
I see at least someone with a brain showed up to the event.
Stormland TV also put in their 2 cents;
“We need to continue to grow in the city, we need to be visionary, and we have to have the leadership at the city level,†Jim Entenman, J&L Harley, said.
I couldn’t agree more Jim, I’m waiting for leadership that centers around citizens, not just businesses that sell overpriced American motorcycles. When the average Joe’s paycheck in Sioux Falls isn’t growing it’s kinda hard to milk him for more money to continue to grow the city. There has to be an alternative plan besides just raising retail taxes and user fees everytime we WANT something. It’s time Sioux Falls implements a corporate tax.
By the end of the session, everyone added ideas and voted on the top priorities for the City Council to consider. Those are:
1. Improving infrastructure
2. Working on the Greenway project and other events
3. Working on Economic Development
4. Creating Affordable Housing,
5. Easing regulatory restrictions
6. Creating a discretionary formula for the Real Estate Tax
As you can see, #6 is now a priority. I guess developers want to continue to see Sioux Falls grow, they just don’t want to pay their fair share of that growth. Go figure. The ironic part about the rest of the list is that those goals are the same as any other city our size that is growing. Once again, nothing original or progressive – just business as usual.
And the best idea from the session didn’t even make the list;
Some specific suggestions included having some private businesses take over some of the public works projects,
This is what other cities do instead of asking citizens to pay for ‘extras’ they get the business community to pony up – great idea.
I guess it never really crossed my mind until yesterday when Quen Be De praised Northside Davey in the informational meeting, “I just think Dave has done a great job of working with our Washington delegation in getting us funds for our projects in Sioux Falls during his administration. I just hope the next three mayors can even come close to what he has been able to accomplish.†(paraphrasing). After I puked in my garbage can I started thinking about that statement. First off, we still are waiting for Lewis & Clark and railroad relocation funds from the Feds, something Dave has not accomplished. Also, they are still in discussions with the Corp of Engineers as to how much money we are gonna get for the levees. And lastly the only reason the levee bonds were called off was because FEMA said that people in the affected area don’t have to buy flood insurance. Go figure. This was all about saving business men and developers insurance premiums not about our safety, because if they were really concerned about our safety, the project would still be moving forward.
Business as usual in city hall.
But how much did this runaround cost us, even if we ditched the bonds? Last Fall councilor Staggers asked the city to give him a list of consulting fees paid out in 2009. He still has not received the list and they continue to deny (a sitting councilor) the numbers. They say he wants to use it for political reasons. My guess is that the amount is so high, that it will for sure become a political issue if it is released. If I had to ballpark it, I would guess the city probably spend close to $12-15 million a year on consulting fees, which includes legal advice.
This has gotten me wondering how much it cost taxpayers to explore the bonds to begin with (including flying a consultant in from Minneapolis in an attempt to scare off our tax initiative petition drive). Just because we only took out a portion of the bonds for the bridge, doesn’t mean they weren’t charging us by the hour. Ironically, the bridge could have been paid for out of the CIP budget, so no consulting fees or interest would have been paid at all.
Why all the secrecy around consulting fees? Because I have a feeling if we knew the real numbers we would have to clean our drawers. I hope the next three mayors aren’t even close to accomplishing what Munson has done, in fact, I hope they go in a completely different direction.
l3wis