Besides the hilarity of the bossom buddies screwing up another press conference and making announcements before final deals have been cut . . .
“There’s no deal,” Haugo said Wednesday from his home in Arizona. “No money has been exchanged and there’s no signed agreement. This was a case of the mayor and (development director) Darrin Smith overdriving their mouths.”
Well that mayor’s mouth has been on overdrive ever since he decided to run for mayor, I’m pretty sure it runs off a Hemi 440. His mouth was certainly in overdrive Tuesday night when he decided to get up from his chair and chew Kenny Anderson’s ass for not ‘controlling’ the city council discussion at the meeting, but you won’t see that tidbit on SIRE since somehow it mysteriously got edited from the video. Rex Rolfing likes to remind people to remove their hats during public testimony because of ‘decorum’. If we want real decorum at our council meetings maybe we should remove the mayor?
I digress.
Back to the $40 million dollar project that may or may not happen. I asked a committee member with the RFP the other day what proposals are being thrown out there (and these are very, very preliminary)
-The project would request $10 million from the city (taxpayers) to build the ramp. The city would own the ramp, and lease space to the hotel and apartment dwellers.
-The project may also be asking for a TIF.
I say one or the other, but not both. I like the idea that the city would own the ramp, but with such a large project ($40 million total) I don’t like the use of a TIF. I would want the remaining $30 million in private investment to be paying the FULL property taxes when the project is completed so that we can recoup our parking ramp expense. I would also be willing to throw in FREE use of the landfill if the other buildings need to be demolished.
I don’t thinking building a ‘boutique’ hotel is a wise choice of TIF money, and since the city would be ponying up $10 million already, I think the gift giving should end there.
Doesn’t matter if there’s a hotel. This is another chance for Huether to get consideration for awarding another non-competitive bid. In the end, it’s just another empty parking ramp and putting the city another 10 million in debt.
Has anybody noticed how Darrin Smith is beginning to take on the mayor’s speech inflections?
lmao – this is an amazing post! But what no one says anywhere is that property taxes will skyrocket for a huge area of downtown and that includes every small business and home. if we want downtown to not turn into the ghetto like every other major city in the world… we need to think about stuff like that. our city council is full of dumb f*cks and our mayor is a f*kn JOKE! id rather not see historical down town get destroyed – all this talk about high rises in sioux falls is a joke. we have 200,000 people give or take – and a ton of empty buildings and strip malls as it is…
Next, the dumbass wants to build a ship dock because there might be an ocean harbor.
Surely, the council says no. If not, none of them should become mayor.
Build a garage at the airport or Denny’s Dome. The city’s going bankrupt anyway. What’s another 10 million or so.
Denny’s Dome, I like it. Never enough slams and free sides that fall off.