The Council had their last working session on Wednesday 25. Here are the recordings (4 separate videos) meetings. I apologize for the bad audio, the ventilation/circulation system is constantly running in this room, so it was hard to get good audio.
The council discussed several things, such as legislative priorities. The council wants the city to have control over taxation within the city. It is a contentious and confusing priority because of the way the city and state choose to fund government, thru regressive sales taxes. The gist was the council wants to be able to raise the penny sales tax when they want a special project built, like an Events Center (of course with the consent of the citizens through a vote, LOL).
The council also discussed the Citizen’s Survey questions. I emailed councilor Erickson about some of my concerns with the survey, specifically if any surveys are sent to city employees who live in Sioux Falls (city employees should not be giving themselves high marks that only skew the survey results). I also said the question about feeling safe Downtown creates a perception that DT is unsafe.
The state & county do a decent job collecting tax. The city is the child who spends the allowance before it’s paid. Big mistake if they can tax. We gave them a corvette (EC), they’ll trade it for a Lambo (Pro Football Dome Stadium).