After listening to the informational meeting on Tuesday, I have some concerns about our potential contract and gift of $500,000 from the city.
When Bill Townsend (from the tennis association) was asked about public use his reaction was mixed. Several councilors questioned how the public use of the court would be implemented.
Townsend answer at first was that besides the Tennis Association using the facility, there would be public time afforded, then he took an unusual turn. He said he couldn’t say how much the public would be using it because they wanted to wait and monitor the public’s use once opened to determine how much time would be allotted for public use.
Huh? If you are asking for public money wouldn’t you be saying that this facility was partially being built for public use? In other words, if there is truly a PUBLIC need for the facility, the city giving money makes sense, but you don’t know how much the public MIGHT use it, why should we be set in stone with giving you public funds?
Later, Townsend was asked if the city could see how much money the Tennis Association has raised. He said he would not give that information because the original agreement from the city was to give 20% of the cost. But since they are not giving the full 20% he didn’t feel entitled to tell us what they have raised.
What?! If the city is agreeing to give a certain amount, they should be afforded the courtesy of knowing what the Tennis association has raised. It’s not a hard question and it certainly isn’t personal, it’s just a dollar amount, not names of donors.
Lastly when councilor Staggers asked about the conflict of interest with the Mayor signing the contract with his wife sitting on the tennis association, Townsend’s answer was clearly back pedaling. He said he didn’t look at it as a conflict because Cindy Huether has been volunteering on the committee way before the mayor was sworn into office.
Doesn’t matter what Mrs. Huether did before Mike was mayor, it matters now because they are asking for the money while he is Mayor.
It’s Thursday nite. Joe Q. Public and his wife Jane would like to play a grudge match against their feisty neighbors at the Cindy Huether tennis complex. But alas, Cindy and mike have their 8th match of the week against mr and mrs metli at the same time. Who gets the court? Pretty damn naive if you can’t figure that one out.
Enough dodging and weaving to make a drunk sailor proud.
This whole thing is a train wreck. I grew up playing competitive tennis – club membership, lessons, USTA tournaments, the whole nine yards. We were hardly rich, so it was a big sacrifice for my family and admittedly I always sort of felt like the hoi polloi crashing the rich kids’ party.
Anyway, the notion of a “public” indoor facility in the traditional sense is laughable because it basically can’t be done, between the cost of running the facility and the scarcity of the resource itself.
You can’t run the place with some willy-nilly “show up and see if there’s a court available” approach. So now you’re talking about reservations. Then if there are scarcity issues, you can bet your bottom dollar that they’ll start selling “memberships” or some other way that can effectively allow “members” to reserve time early, etc. That’s nothing more than a gateway to allow upper middle-class families first dibs.
That’s precisely what Townsend is inelegantly dancing around when asked about public use. It’ll basically be the same as a private club, with the exception that the general public will probably be able to take lessons and fill unused court time without having to pay a membership fee.
There’s a similar facility in Spring Lake Park, just north of the Cities. No membership is required, although for the low low price of just $199 for the winter season, you get first dibs on court time. And even there, you’re still looking at $28 an hour for singles and $32 an hour for doubles.
Are they going to do fee waivers for all the poor kids so they can have court time when they aren’t watching their free movies at the State? How far up the a$$ of the rich kids are Mike Huether and this Council going to climb?
And this is why I’m not a fan of the indoor pool.
On a related note, evernotice the tennis court lights aroumd town are on every night until at least 9pm? Ive seen this at Augie and the courts at WHS. Never seen anyone playing though. I wonder if MMM ordered this?
Thanks for the Spring Lake Park heads up Hornguy.
Scott is absolutely right to compare this facility to the indoor pool. It is another private facility to be built with public money for the special class of Sioux Falls.
How about, the poor can play a free game of their own once they have put in 250 hrs of ball fetching for the members. Problem solved.
On a different note, not sure why I was thinking about this, but I was watching ‘100 Eyes’ on Business on Wednesday, and Lloyd was on he said that Lloyd companies had their best year ever and that they manage 3300 units and have partnership in 2600 apartment units in Sioux Falls ALONE, he also went on to say they are building apartments all over the region. It must be where the money is at right now. If you do the rough math that is approximately $20 million in rent collected a year JUST IN SIOUX FALLS! It’s a good thing we gave him those TIF’s for a luxury hotel and condos, don’t know how the company could survive without those incentives 🙁
Lloyd is a snake. Ask any of the hundreds of subcontractors he’s shit on over the last 40 years.
More like a fox.
I don’t know how many actual properties Lloyds manage, but they used to manage the apartment complex I live in and several others. However, about the 1st of April they no longer manage the complex I live in, the owners are now the managers too, out of Minnesota, however each complex has local managers. I don’t know if the same people took over the other complexes that Lloyds used to manage or not. I can’t see a lot of difference in management up to this point.
I should have added, I don’t know if Lloyds quit managing these apartment complexes on their own, or if it was a mutual agreement, at owner’s request.
Joan, my assumption was that it was too costly, so they took it over themselves, not saying that is the case, just guessing.
The truth of the matter is while the big guys are doing swimingly, the working class and small time property owners are still trying to recover from the economy collapse. But hey, when you get property tax breaks and taxpayer subsidized landscaping, it’s easy to dig out of a hole, but god dammit, if you don’t scoop your sidewalk, the city will fine you $100.
With public money involved, the tennis center should be available for public reservations and leased to the association for a fee. Commercial interests cannot control public facilities. If they want preferential treatment, have Sanford build it out south of 60th.
Oh look, the Argus has finally decided this is worth an article. And what do we learn? That we have a private facility here in town that sells the same product for nearly the same price and COULDN’T FIND PEOPLE TO USE THE DAMN PLACE until they added other services.
I can only attribute this city’s shitty governance to Stockholm Syndrome.