That was Eugene’s answer to councilors when they asked him what they should do in response to the survey.
During Inside Town Hall councilor Jamison talks about the (unscientific) city survey. Of course they were all hyped up because they got a 93% on people saying Sioux Falls is a great place to live. What does this have to do with government? Not much. What makes a community great are it’s people, not it’s politicians. During the interview when Jamison is talking about the negative results he said that street maintenance was at 32% (without saying what that 32% meant) The actual suvey said “32% think our streets are good to excellent”. That means 68% think either that our roads are either poor or fair. That is why it is important to spend the 2nd penny on what it is for, roads, not monkey crappers and wood thingies in parks. They also forgot to mention that only 40% of citizens think that city government listens to them. Rowenhorst said that the survey cost $21,500 and only 922 people responded. That is well under 1% of the total residents. The survey cost $23.31 per response. You could have paid me that per respondent and I would have knocked on doors and did a realistic survey. Also left out is that the survey was only mailed to registered voters. This is not a surprise, but it does tell us that the city isn’t interested in your opinion if you don’t vote. I’m okay with that. I think people who don’t vote and are not registered need to get a clue and start participating in this thing we call a democracy. I have often felt there should be an income tax surcharge of $500 for every person who is not registered to vote.
In the second half of the show, Mark Cotter and Bob Litz came on to defend the poorly formulated arterial road funding. Litz went on a little rant about the media not giving them time to explain themselves that is why he came on Inside Town Hall. Give me a break. The proof is in the pudding, the numbers don’t lie. Taxpayers have put in over 13x more then the developers have. What is there to explain? Cotter also changed the formulation to 70/30 now (taxpayers put in 70%) Originally it was going to be a 50/50 partnership (LMAO). Litz blames the economy for developers not putting in their share. REALLY? If the economy is so bad then why are you taxing citizens more? It’s okay for developers to skirt their responsibility but taxpayer’s are forced to pony up?! We warned you on the night of the vote that the economy was tanking, and you ignored us or watched the Olympics. Read the above paragraph; YOU NEED TO START LISTENING TO CONSTITUENTS AND STOP MAKING F’ING EXCUSES! Bob said that we need to just hold tight and the developers will start catching up with the taxpayer’s contribution. I won’t hold my breath.