Sioux Falls

New Flamingo Barns, Monkey Crappers and Football fields is considered 'moving forward' in Sioux Falls. WTF?

l3wis May 5, 2009 0Comments

Thanks for the new crapper Sioux Falls taxpayers!

I have long known that our city leader’s priorities are not in line with a majority of the citizens, the circus that occurred at the informational meeting yesterday proved this.

Sioux Falls officials are seeking an $18.5 million quality-of-life bond for four projects ranging from a new west-side library to Big Sioux River greenway improvements.

 

The improvements between Sixth and Eighth streets along the river have the highest price tag at $5 million, followed by a 15,000-square-foot library at $4.3 million, a junior football complex for $4.2 million and $2.5 million for zoo master-plan improvements.

Porridge trailer The library is the only part of this spending that makes sense. One of the biggest reasons this bond should not be approved is that the city is withholding information to the councilors on what the money will be spent on and details of the projects. Here are some of the (few) details that came out of the informational meeting;

– The library gave a fine presentation on what the money would be spent on and how the city determines when it will build another branch. It was a very detailed and well thought out presentation.

– The Zoo also gave a good presentation, but like I have said in the past poor use of taxpayer money.

– The Greenway project is a mess. Not sure if Director Cooper knows what they are doing with the project, or if he is just gonna wing it when he gets the money but the only thing he really could give details on was that they are removing the RR bridge at Falls Park and replacing it with a pedestrian bridge. Obviously that won’t cost $5 million. Staggers questioned Cooper about the rest of the projects planned in association with it and Cooper got a little nervous. He said he would get back to the council on that. So you are asking for $5 million but have no plan on how to spend it? Nice.

– As for the football fields, the city does have a plan on what they want to build, but the Jr. Football Association hasn’t raised the $1.4 million they promised to provide, and on top of that they haven’t signed a contract with the city saying they would provide that money yet. Only a handshake. I think until the Jr. Football Association signs a legally binding contract with the city saying they will provide $1.4 million by a certain timeframe we shouldn’t start or fund this project. We need to know for sure they are going to uphold their part of the deal, and we need more then a lousy handshake. There is also a gigantic mystery swirling around about the Hockey Rec center. When Staggers questioned the city about it, they all dummied up. That makes me suspicious that there will be more organizations asking for handouts in the future in this proposed sports complex area.

Whether you are for or against this bond doesn’t really matter, the council deserves to know what the money is being spent on before they approve the spending. Once again a bunch of blind mice following the Mayor to the money pit.

Highlights from the SF City Council informational meeting

l3wis May 4, 2009 0Comments

I’ll get you more info in the morning, but these comments made me laugh, then cry;

(Paraphrasing)

“The city has been very financially responsible” – De Knudson

I think I need hernia surgery after that comment.

“There is a lot of citizens in this community that are confused about the city debt and how it is paid back, I think there needs to be some clarifications in graphs and charts.” – Gerald Beninga

Gerald was clearly trying to downplay the city debt (currently $320 million with a possibly of growing to $400-500 million by the end of the year). He was trying to downplay it by saying some of it was paid back thru separate fees and not retail taxes. While this is true it really doesn’t fricking matter because;

• Straw Dogs video

#1- It has to be paid back by taxpayer’s and property owners no matter how you slice it and,

#2 – We have to pay huge interest on it.

Nice try Gerald. A spade is a spade. $320 million dollar debt, is $320 million dollar debt.

Excuses, Excuses, Excuses

l3wis May 4, 2009 0Comments

Hey kids, get your butts down here and help me clean out the basement while wading through other people’s excrement.

As I posted about last week, the Sioux Falls city budget will exceed a half-billion this year. Up $89 million from the original budget proposed by the Mayor’s office and approved by the City Council. I decided to do a little more digging and this is what I came up with according to the finance office;

–          The city does not plan to spend the entire amount, because many of the projects are in the CIP and will take several years to complete. More or less it’s typical of what bureaucrats do, pack a budget with more than they want in hopes to get what they really want in the end when it is whittled down.

–          It jumped to $89 million largely due to the carry-forward of $55.4 million from 2008 in unfinished CIP projects. Some of the bigger projects in the amount were flood control, main library, 57^th street upgrades and (yes) more zoo improvements.

–           Two other numbers that stuck out to me, and maybe were just ‘interesting’ to read was that the city collects $153.2 million in Enterprise funds (water and sewer fees) and doles out another $15.1 million in debt service.

 

In a final word, the Finance Department claims that budgets have been so large in recent years due to;

 

–          Lewis & Clark

–          Eastside Sanitary and Sewer system

–          Storm Drainage upgrades

–          Rail Relocation

–          Flood Control

Yes these are all ‘needed’ upgrades to our city, but we went in the wrong direction. We could have saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by funding these projects differently.

Lewis and Clark should have been ‘pay as we go’ instead we basically paid them for something we won’t have until maybe 2012. On top of that, the Feds should have paid for this ENTIRE project. But with Senators like Thune, Herseth and Johnson busy chasing around lobbyists and Wall Streeters, what do you expect?

The massive storm drainage upgrades were in direct response to the city systematically ignoring infrastructure for over 20-40 years and crossing their fingers hoping nothing would happen, until (literally) shit backed up into hundreds of people’s houses two weeks in a row. The city then realized that they may have to fix it, which of course cost us a lot more in the end.

As you can see, a large chunk of the budget goes to necessary projects, the problem is we are either paying too much for them or we shouldn’t be paying for them at all through loans and such.

Once again the spin cycle dial is turned to a full-load at City Hall with the tired old ‘our hands are tied’ excuse – but are the purse strings?