Bringing Metro 911 under city management is a good idea and will help with improving the lives of their employees. But there seems to be some little white lies strewn throughout the presser;
As the Sioux Falls City Council is currently in the process of establishing the city’s 2024 budget, cost is an important factor. TenHaken, however, claims the merger will have almost no financial impact.
“The cost is budget-neutral, we’re just shifting this over. Currently, the city and county both pay into Metro — along with the 911 surcharges and other revenues,” TenHaken explained. “Basically those just move under the city’s budget.”
It’s NOT that simple kids. If you are proposing providing better wages and benefits to the employees and more internal services provided to them, as well as new staff, it is going to cost more, a lot more. So while it is true the funding entities will remain in place it will cost more. You can’t just improve an entire department and think it will cost nothing. Councilors have told me they just recently heard about this and are disappointed they were not brought in at the beginning of this process for input, or better yet, input from the public.
As I have said, when government keeps things from you, they are up to no good. They know this will cost more, and they didn’t want to tell the council, and ultimately the public, because they are trying to avoid having that conversation, because unless they planted money trees at the new Metro offices, this is going to cost us more.