Music Man (guest post)
l3wis A South DaCola foot soldier sent me this;
A tweet by mayor PTH on December 31, 2024, praising a contractor city bond lawyer, suggested potential coming economic disasters we must prepare for, likely to start in 2025, affecting us for many decades to come.
Every time a bond payment is made on any for the local play palaces our mayors Paul or Mike insisted get built, it costs us taxpayers. Every one of the payments is part of our tax burden. Each of the buildings, swimming pools, event centers, offices, and parking ramps, was a creation of their egos at our expense. Every one of the bond payments came from somewhere, starving something else. Now the city is planning to build roads using bonds over time with interest expense paid to be paid by the limited 2nd penny. These bonds must have money from somewhere. The city adopted the infrastructure 2nd penny sales tax to build required infrastructure. It is still money coming from taxpayers. Very little of the 2nd penny is coming from out of town. Debt is debt and must be paid somehow by us. None of the bonds have benefited the many, only the few.
Remember a few short years ago when mayor Paul got upset because a city council member clearly articulated the infrastructure project was going to strip money from the taxpayers by increasing water & sewer bills? The councilmember wanted a clear statement of how much it was to cost and how the burden was to be paid. The mayor and his staff claimed a low figure just to say she was wrong. Guess what, they lied. Each of our mayors have tried to be clever by claiming their projects were not going to cost us anything. In the end, each one of their projects were not built to the claimed high standards or for the price stated. Once built, each were not taken care of properly because the city didn’t have the 1st penny operating money necessary for upkeep.
Each convinced us the “great investments” in play palaces, will not cost us, only pay dividends. There is no way to get something for nothing and the worst part it is usually only for a place to play. The average taxpayer must be burdened so the developers and flim-flam promoters can play. Sure, every tourist who comes to Sioux Falls to witness our boom town by the falls may pay some sales tax, but like the Denty, the minuscule sales tax collected by the activities don’t come close to paying the wear and tear upkeep on the buildings, much less cover the bond payments. The dividends went to the contractors hired to save the mess from disaster.
We the taxpayers lose money on every act or show that comes to Sioux Falls. The minuscule sales tax does not replace the dollars that are stripped from our local businesses and their chance to survive. These events send our potential economic multiplier out of town promoters, stopping the circulation of the money in our town by sending to far off lands, never to be seen again. Temporary memories for long term pain. Dividends at our expense.
Sioux Falls has historically suffered less when the national economy has tanked, because we have had good local multiplier effect. By promoting the ego gratifying celebrity groups coming to Sioux Falls every year, takes hundreds of millions of multiplier dollars out of our area economy. Just to say Pink, Elton John or some half-assed Nashville celebrity is coming to town to take away more of our money. Dividends at our expense.
So, we already have witnessed how stripping money out of a community kills solid future growth of many cities. We already have experienced the waste, building of play palaces we can’t afford to keep up. Just look at the poor construction of the Denty, the financial frauds and lies committed in the administration building, the settlements and huge payments on the underused and poorly conceived bunker ramp and you will see the egos of the bonders and city officials had to be protected. Dividends at our expense.
Being proud of bonding $545 million is jarring and now our “wise city leaders” want to scam an unnecessary $70 million for pools plus another $400 million out of us taxpayers for more farfetched dreams of reviving a dying convention business, by building another set of buildings we will never be able to afford. If the rumored insider deals being discussed are true, we Sioux Falls taxpayers will be paying in many more ways than just taxes and lost economic multipliers, we may see court hearings and more. Dividends at our expense.
Do you remember The Music Man? The production could have been based on the music men parked in 9th and Main corner offices. Our leaders are still playing the parts written by Meredith Willson, that of liars, charlatans, and just plain scammers, like the Iowa based Music Man civic leaders. They all drank the juice of the salesman selling dreams. Dividends at our expense.
The Music Man was about a con man promising to teach the town’s children to play in a marching band, if they people buy his scam. The musical was set in 1912, in the fictional town of River City, Iowa, based on the writer’s birthplace of Mason City, Iowa. The production popularized songs like “Seventy-Six Trombones,” “Trouble” and “Gary, Indiana”. Well, the show had a happy ending, but it showed the gullibility of our midwestern small towns dreaming of being something that they can never be, except to be gullible to the flim-flam salesman. We small towners continue to compare to big cities and dream of being something that can never be except gullible to the latest flim-flam salesman selling bonds. We never seem to learn the lessons of our past. Dividends at our expense.
The Music Man may have had a fictional happy ending, but I don’t hold out hope for Sioux Falls. I will leave you with this final thought, when will we not be gullible suckers of the latest our community’s Music Man?