South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

2011

Event Center Sioux Falls

How much private money is available for an Events Center? Good question.

l3wis 13Comments

It must be difficult for Tracy to run his presentation with all the puppet strings in the way

I watched the city council informational meeting where finance director Turbak laid out how we are going to pay for the Events Center.

1) Money from our reserves as a down payment (our money)

2) Bonds (paid back with our money)

3) Private money ($0 so far)

That’s right, the city is geared up to spend taxpayer money when no private money has been secured. Zero. Zilch. There is also no pricetag.

The timeline comes amid indications that some in the business community could be gearing up for a campaign to win voter approval.

To Hell with ‘campaigns’. When are you going to start cutting checks? I’m sorry, but voters will never approve an Events Center until private industry gets a little skin in the game. I would almost be ready to swallow a new events center funded mostly by bonds IF and ONLY IF private industry ponies up, at least 30%, especially developers in this city who have made millions from handouts from the city (infrastructure upgrades).

Finance Director Tracy Turbak said the facility can be built without new taxes.

“I believe taxpayers will be more tolerable – more tolerant – of projects that don’t hit them in the wallet.”

No ‘new taxes’ as of yet. But what is stopping the city from raising the entertainment tax to subsidize the facility? Nothing. The mayor’s plan for a new EC has been smoke and mirrors from the beginning. Don’t believe me? Let’s talk about the transparency issue. How many of the Mayor’s EC presentations have been available online before he presented them? Zero. How many can you look at now online? Zero. Maybe I’m wrong, and if I am, I encourage people to point me in the right direction. I can’t find them.

Zero transparency won’t get you far with voters, this is the main reason why I think this will go down in flames. Many councilors are not happy about the lack of transparency and the plan may end in their hands, then we are back to square one again.

Why? Because we refuse to look at the 700 pound gorilla in the room; Voter approval of a funding source.

 

SF City Council Sioux Falls

Your yummy tasty water is gonna get more expensive, again

l3wis 11Comments

Stehly’s letter has perfect timing, the council votes on the fee increases tomorrow. I think this paragraph says it all;

The city’s priority has not been to spend tax dollars on basic infrastructure such as sewer upgrades and streets. Understandably, paying taxes and fees is necessary for living in our fine city, but we need to work to keep the basic essentials such as water and sewer rates reasonable. We need to work to use more efficiently the huge amount of added revenue that past water and sewer rate increases have brought.

This is what I cannot figure out. Why is it that we have to continue to raise rates when the money is already there to repair these pipes. One word: Greed.

UPDATE

I see at last night’s council meeting all but one councilor voted for water increases and all six present voted for sewer increases (Rolfing and Jamison were absent);

“There is no way to dress up a vote like this,” Councilor Vernon Brown said. “It does stink, pun intended.”

What needs to be ‘dressed up’ anyway? It’s simple. There is money in the CIP to pay for these repairs, frickin’ use it. This should have been a no-brainer. Instead our stubborn council justified the increase because of sewer repairs. But what if they would not have voted for the increases? The pipe would have still been fixed. Why? Already budgeted and planned, something the council failed to recognize. Imagine that.

Event Center Mike Huether Sioux Falls

Huether to use private money and a marketing firm to sell his shiny turd?

l3wis 9Comments

I found this post by the Bleached Blonde Norwegian Thunderbolt interesting.

Reliable sources say the mayor and his economic czar have reached out to have Mike Knuth of Public Affairs Company (click on the link to learn more about the company)  to run the events center campaign. In addition, sources say the two have also gone to Sanford and Avera to put in $5k-$10k each to pay for it.

I often assumed Mike would use some kind of marketing talent to sell his POS Events Center plan, it would be smart of him to use private money, but is he really fooling anyone? Jen says it best;

It is interesting there is an effort to hire a consultant to run the event center campaign when there is no identifiable source of funding yet presented to the public.

Well, I can look at this two ways. On the logical side, Jen is right, the public hasn’t seen a funding source, so why would they even consider this? But to be the Devil’s advocate, it is the exact reason why Mikey is trying to sell it to the public before a funding source appears. Those of us who have been following this (and even some who haven’t) know this will cost us well over $200 million, not the $100 million Mike likes to talk about. I don’t think Mike is fooling anyone. There is one thing South Dakotans do best, they like to get by ‘On the cheap’ as much as possible and building an EC won’t be any different.

Come clean now Mike.

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