This of course is NO surprise;
Mayor Paul TenHaken late last week released a plan to spend more than $1.1 billion on city capital improvement projects over the next five years. It’s the highest capital budget in city history, and the price tag is more than double the plan presented to City Council a decade prior.
While there has been a lot of talk about inflation over the past couple of years, in fact, since 2014 it is only up 28%. So how is it that the city has to double it’s capital budget in just 9 years?
One argument will be growth, but Sioux Falls has only grown by 37,000 people since 2014, so that doesn’t account for the spending.
OVERTAXATION AND FEES!
This is why the city is spending so much money, they are taking in to much. This city hasn’t missed an opportunity to raise fees and taxes every opportunity it gets. It has also rearranged a lot of capital projects with ARPA money freeing up 2nd penny money for other projects. This of course has also left of with an enormous reserve.
Anytime our Finance Director, Shawn Pritchett, comes to the mic and cries about how we can’t pass up fee and tax increases, all you have to do is look at this preposterous budget. Talk about feeding the beast.
Obviously, all of this will change again next year, it may get smaller, but I doubt it.