Maybe we could use Levee fine monies to pay for the indoor pool? (Image: KSFY)
Understanding the city budget isn’t easy, and definitely not my forte, but understanding the city budget under the leadership of a subprime credit card salesman is even harder. Huether is good at playing the marketing game of deceptive language when he wants to spend our (borrowed) money. Just look at the Events Center, he is constantly telling us it will be built under budget (without mentioning most of the utility hookup and parking lot improvements are coming from the CIP and enterprise funds NOT from the EC bonds). This is ‘how’ you build an Events Center, ‘under budget’.
He is pulling a similar word game with the indoor pool, last night at the city council meeting his finance director, Tracy Turbak, took center stage and told us this about the indoor pool funding;
“. . . without the use of any further debt.â€
What Tracy didn’t tell us is that they are currently using the Levee debt to pay for the indoor pool. Confused yet? I will explain. A few years back when King Dave was running our little village on the Big Poo, FEMA came in and said that a whole lot of people (retailers) were in the flood plain by the Mall, and they would need flood insurance if we didn’t raise the levees. Okay, no problem, that’s the job of the CORPS, right? Yup, but they were not going to give us the money, yet, so we took out a bond to pay for the levees, in hopes the Feds would pay us back, eventually. Well imagine my surprise when the Fed’s sent us a check for the levee work last year. Great. What would a logical and prudent city government do with a repayment for a bond debt? Pay back the bond? Not so fast says Turbak, we cannot pay back the bond in full until 2018(?). Okay, well why don’t we do one of two things then, either put the money in a savings account until the repayment date, or spend the money on similar infrastructure projects, like drainage, or sewer or even roads?
Then comes Mr. Money burning a hole in his pocket, Mike ‘Rack up the Debt’ Huether. He decides that we can now build an indoor pool with the levee debt that we have incurred. Who on the council would have thought the night they approved the levee bond they would take the repayment to build an indoor pool?
Now that’s real ‘vision’.
The moral of the story? Turbak and the administration are half-lying when they say there will be NO debt associated with building an indoor pool. We eventually will have to pay off the levee debt. I wonder how the swim teams and parks & rec department plan to pay off that debt? It might become suddenly very expensive to swim at an indoor public pool, but hey, we all have to sacrifice something to keep our town safe from floods and childhood obesity/diabetes.
Now I’m confused.
But the funding isn’t the only issue with this grand scheme, Tracy and Mike have some partners in crime, literally.
The city clerk and city attorney have also chimed in with their assessments of the latest pool petition;
“They would need approximately 5,200 valid signatures. So that will require in the range of 7,000 to 7,500 signatures for us to take a look and go through and verify,” said Hogstad.
Lori says 7,000 to 7,500 signers needed. Already planning a 20% petition signature rejection?
David Pfeifle, Sioux Falls city attorney, says the group would have to get the required signatures within the next month to impact the pool’s progress.
Impact the pool’s progress? I wonder what secret rule book he is reading from? Seems the dog ate Fiddle-Faddle’s homework quite a bit in law school. The city could issue contracts, who cares. The city could start all the maneuvers to start the project and it all comes to a stop upon submission and certification of petitions.
The pool construction could be stopped even at the site preparation, foundations or at any stage once the completed petitions are filed. It does not matter what the city does. They could even tear apart the current pool. Does this concern you?
This is an Initiative. The group is proposing something. No formal city council votes have been taken prior to the filing, so the 180 day rule is in force. Upon submission, the signatures less than or equal to 180 days are valid for counting toward the goal.
If they had started the petition process after next week’s official vote, it becomes a Referral and the 20 day signature collection rule is in force.
The indoor pool advocates, the city officials, VA and the “anywhere but Spellerberg†folks need to hammer out a solution before the city is in big time legal butt hurt. Imagine issuing contracts with an indoor pool architect or contractor and the company starts work only to be stopped because the petition drive is successful. Can you imagine the court costs the city will face when this hits the fan? They are going to need more than a therapy pool to fix what ails them.
This could easily be dealt with. Subprime Mike could bring the sides together and use the new petition as blueprint for the indoor pool project. Or he could choose to not work with them, like he did with SON, (which will be tied up in court until Walmart submits) and watch the city scramble to move the pool, approve new funding, locate to a different site just because the indoor proponents didn’t do anything more than coerce their friends in the parks department or on the council.
One thing is for sure, the petition gatherers are well known for getting the signatures they need. Why doesn’t the mayor and the city administration understand this?  Once again it is the city government screwing up and spreading ‘SMOKE’. Real leaders would bring everyone together and find a workable compromise. What is MMM afraid of?
Let’s get an indoor pool built that the voters have already told us they want. But let’s do it by abiding by the petition/election laws, partnering with private entities so we don’t have to take money from a debt repayment fund and by working with all parties.
But see, that isn’t the way bullies operate.
UPDATE (another theory sent to me by a reader):
Consider Tracy Turbak has tried to go get bonding for the indoor pool. Could it be the city could not get bonding for the pool?
Now imagine this, Tracy went to get bonds and because of the Quit Claim deed or other ownership issues, the city’s bonding plans had been rejected.
What if bonding agencies, firms or individuals performing due diligence asked what guarantees are in place if the VA seized the property?
Now two days after the election, Tracy has a miracle funding source of unobligated refund cash because he could not get it anywhere else?
The cash has been burning a hole in the mayor’s back pocket and many of us expected something unusual after the voting but…
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