Letter to the Editor today in the Argus Leader;
There is nothing wrong with businesses becoming wealthy through hard work and mutually beneficial trade. Healthy businesses provide jobs, and competition keeps costs down for consumers. But when businesses start to lobby government for special regulatory favors and government spending projects to help pad their profits, they cease to be products of market forces.
Do you think city hall knows how to spend your hard earned money better then you? When the mayor and half of the council raised your sales tax, that’s exactly what they told you. They believe in the ‘trickle down economics’ model of taxation; increase taxes and give that additional revenue to special interests such as developers and contractors in hopes that money will ‘trickle back’ down to those original taxpayers in the form of jobs and growth.
It’s a backwards way of spending YOUR money to improve this community. There is a better way to move us forward; let taxpayers spend that money individually instead of handing it over to city bureaucrats and special interests.
They disguised this regressive tax increase as being progressive because they claim it will help our city grow. Hogwash.
 I’m all for new and maintained roads – I’m just against how they want to pay for them. New roads can be paid for through developer fees, which I fully support and roads can be maintained through the sales tax we already pay. Councilor Costello put it best in an Argus Leader article “It’s a shell game.†There is nothing stopping our mayor and the city council from spending those increased taxes on anything they want to. They sold it to us by saying we needed the new roads yet the CIP budget (which is also funded with sales tax) is packed full of unneeded projects that only benefit a few in our community not the greater good. We can cut the CIP easily and make up for this sales tax decrease. It will mandate the mayor and city council to spend within their means for at least one year (2010) and you also have to remember we may have up to four new councilors and a new mayor in 2010, lets break them in right by showing them they need to have some fiscal restraint.
Want REAL growth in our community? Stop overtaxing our citizens on necessities like food and utilities and let them spend that money on goods and services that helps ALL local businesses grow not just a select few lucky enough to get a handout from the city.
Local business drives our economy in the form of good jobs which promotes growth. Would Sioux Falls grow stronger if ALL local business were getting a piece of the pie and not just the special interests?
Scott L. Ehrisman
Co-Chair, Citizens for a Responsible Sales Tax
Theresa Stehly and I will be on the local radio talk show hosted by Jon Micheals, FORUM on all the Backyard Broadcasting stations Sunday Morning talking about the petition drive for the initiative to reduce sales taxes.
KELO AM and FM at 7 AM and all the other stations at 8 AM. I believe the interview lasted about 40 minutes.
I think they endorsed him because he shaved that awful mustache.
Just the other day councilors Jamison and Knudson were talking about the city elections at the Charter Revision meeting and they said that for the most part councilors were non-partisan.
I love the irony of our city government. If it wasn’t so freaking ridiculous I would cry.
H/T DWC
From time to time I agree with Councilor Knudson, but too often not for the same reasons.
At the Charter Revision Meeting yesterday, (scroll down to the October 28, meeting, De speaks at the beginning) De suggested we move our city elections to June to save the city money and have a bigger voter turnout. I couldn’t agree more, because it would line up with the state primary elections.
De says she couldn’t understand why voter turnout was so low in the last city election compared to 2006.
Knudson cited preliminary statistics on voter turnout for city and special elections. In April 2006, 37.1 percent of voters cast ballots in the joint city/school election, compared to 14.1 percent for the city election last April.
Two words; Super Precincts.
The change to Super Precincts hurt voter turnout big time. Some people who intended to vote showed up to their old precinct and never voted. Others were so confused by it, they said the Hell with it. I can’t understand why some councilors are in such a state of denial about the super precincts debacle. Admit the mistake and move on already. Seriously.
Councilor Jamison was opposed to the move saying the council candidates would get lost in the shuffle. Bologna. I could see that if the election was during a presidential/national election but not a primary.
There was also mention that the city elections were bi-partisan. That one made me laugh. While there is members of both political parties and one independent (that I know of) sitting on the council, I can assure you that the councilors are very involved in their political parties.
I found this letter to the Editor of the Argus Leader right on;
Representatives of developers, construction companies and other groups such as the Chamber of Commerce took more than two hours to argue the need for such development in promoting the growth of the city.
This was ridiculous. Nobody was opposing the development of these arterial roads or seeking to stall the city’s growth.
I found if complete BS that the mayor let the proponents (developers) speak first. I also found it ironic that not a single individual citizen (not representing a group or business) came forth for this tax increase, and equally ironic that not a single individual came forth (representing a business) to oppose this tax increase. This really was about special interests vs. citizens. And 4 councilors (who are knee deep in special interests) and the mayor voted against the citizens.
The opposition to the tax increase might well have orchestrated another two hours of testimony from representatives of agencies and organizations that know only too well the struggles of a sizeable segment of the city’s population:
Yes, but by the time we got to take the podium it was 10:30 at night (3 1/2 hours after the meeting started, and we got to listen to councilor Knudson whine about being tired (maybe she was tired of reading closed captioning for that long).
I will be interviewed late this afternoon for Jon Micheals Sunday talk show that airs on KELO radio talking about the petition drive.
l3wis