This week’s meetings are on Monday due to the council going to Pierre on Tuesday.
Charter Revision Commission Meeting • 3 PM
Only agenda item is a going away party for Departing Members Pauline Poletes and Robert Thimjon. They accomplished their very successful shut down of charter amendments. Party on Garth.
City Council Informational Meeting • 4 PM
On presentation on Arterial Street Sidewalk Installation by Chad Huwe, City Engineer
City Council Regular Meeting • 7 PM
Item #6, Approval of Contracts;
Sub Item #8, $150K to USD Discovery Center
Sub Item #9, $275K to Development Foundation
Sub Item #25, $136K to YMCA for after school programs and
Sub Item #26, $111 to VOA for after school programs.
I wish the merits of these four items would have been discussed in the regular meeting instead of stuffed into the consent agenda.
Item #7, Change orders, we will be handing about $1.5 million to Journey Construction for the Village on the River Bunker Ramp.
Item #20, Transfer of 2020 Retail Liquor License, with video lottery terminals, and 2020 Package Liquor License from Badlands Gaming LLC, Badlands Gaming, 1600 West Russell Street, to South Dakota Veterans Alliance Inc., 1600 West Russell Street. It looks like this deal is moving forward.
Item #25 (29-30), 2nd Reading of TIF agreement with Lloyd Companies and Sioux Steel Development. As I have said in the past this will pass. I guess councilor Stehly will be absent from this meeting and NOT voting on the issue due to previous commitments. I have said that a better approach would be to gift them the River Greenway property (so they can develop it at their expense) and give them a $10 million dollar TIF only for that redevelopment. I think it is a crying shame that local lawmakers across the country are suckered into these kind of agreements which are truly developer handouts and little else. I’m praying for an amendment, but I don’t think it will happen.
Item #26, 2nd Reading, ordinance on campaign financing and elections. I feel there will be some amendments to this item and it will be an interesting to see what is slipped in. I still think that this ordinance should be amended so it is NOT implemented until after the municipal election.
Item #27, Supplemental appropriations for police overtime pay for special events. Like I said yesterday in a post, I fully support this, but I think a discussion should have occurred with the council before the mayor’s office proposed this. It is the council’s job as laid out in charter to be the legislators, not the mayor’s office.
Item #28, Parks and Rec fee increases. You will notice that some of the biggest increases are at the Midco Aquatic Center.
Item #31, Resolution approving preliminary plan for the controversial Golden Gateway addition.
Item #32, A RESOLUTION REMOVING UNCOLLECTIBLE, DELINQUENT ACCOUNTS FROM THE RECORDS. Interesting that these accounts are confidential?
Item #34, Resolution, allowing Landscapes Unlimited to modify the noncompetition clause under the Management Agreement.
Item #35, Charter Revision Commission presents their ballot amendments. I’m urging a vote NO on amendment ‘B’ which would increase the number of signatures needed for a charter revision petition.
More information to come.
Planning Commission Meeting • 6 PM • Wed, Feb 5
Item #2, F, Consent agenda, Sanford Addition for office?
A few things related to this weeks council meeting.
In relation to the T.I.F Agreement for the Sioux Steel Property, lets be clear, this is private property that the land owner is actually using their own ‘money’ to reinvest back in the property, this is NOT “City Property” except for along the river. So we are tied somewhat we can force them to do, beyond the simple fact of approving the “development proposal”. The T.I.F throws in a complicated issue here. As I stand up against T.I.F’s – we got to ask the Council for every $1 dollar we take from the main pot we call Property Tax Collections, we must remind them this takes $1 dollar from our South Dakota Public School System. Meaning, the State now must come in and “subsidize” that loss of income. How do they do this, well – either they raise property tax rates on all of us, cut appropriations to Education, the Counties, and yes, that also means the CITY ends with a cut as well. So ultimate, these large T.I.F’s lead to raising our tax rates. Lets also be clear here – we are about to ‘reward’ one of the companies whom destroyed Seney Island, thus leading to the land becoming “blighted” in the first place.
As for the $300,000 additional funds being appropriated to the Sioux Police for over time during Public Events. I have one issue with this. WHY was this not appropriated earlier as part of the budgeting process, and what does the “average” Police Officer earn over a 12 Month Period. At what point do they become simply “Public Stewards” giving back to the very people of our community? Are they considered
Employees or are they Public Stewards. Employees get Guaranteed Wages, Benefits, Guaranteed Pensions for life; while Public Stewards donate their “time” to the public while we duly ‘compensate’ them for that time without benefits. I feel this is an end round to expanding the Police Force, Handing out “Raises”, and Appeasing their wants and needs. Just a few thoughts I wanted to share.
Someone needs to do a Public Records Request to get a list of all “Employees” of the City to learn how many employees we have, their job description, and to learn of how much they actually “earn”. What we will find, is the TAX PAYER gets billed a huge amount of money to pay these “Public Employees” a wage that is far beyond the fair market value of anyone in the private sector. Not only that, but we get locked into these contracts where we must pay for them until they ‘Die’.
I am NOT against compensating our Police, Fire, and Rescue personal good well, I am simply against placing more and more costs on the tax payer, which all it does is increase our ‘tax rates’.
My Thoughts,
Mike Zitterich
(Sioux Falls)