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.
A realistic forecast considering prior city growth factor and inflation. Needs unpredictable growth and uncontrolled inflation potential. It seems to be to much focus on parks without infrastructure upgrades. Likely, this line item will be stolen from then need repayment and even higher funding. What’s not anticipated is big city uncontrolled demise or disaster.
Fiction that entertains narcissist city leaders.
Is any of this covid money? I’m sure inflation plays a part, but like Metli once said in a KELO interview during the building of Phillips to the Falls: “You got to spend it when you have it”…
( and Woodstock adds: “At McDonalds, they used to say that you got to spend money to make money”…. “I used to work fries there”…. “Oh, and don’t forget about JCPenney’s ‘Buy More Save More’ promotions”….. )
The City had taken $47,000,000 from ARP FUNDS, and they had taken the year before$73,000,000 if I remember correclty, those funds were spent during the current years they grabbed the funds, the whole COVID PANDEMIC was all about taking federal funds, binding State and Local Govt’s to the federal govt for years to come.
The CITY had never lost any tax revenues, but the “sales Tax” remained even from the year before during the 2020 Fiscal Seaosn, so in a sense, COVID retricted people from spending, but…with the population growth, the ‘tax revenues remained steady.
The COVID and ARP funds were utilzied to pay for “capital projects” where contractual obligations were to be met, while the City utilized sales and property taxes to fund general government/projects, while the Enterprise Funds (except for Entertainment) remained the same, so they city never really lost any revenues.
What the CITY did lose during 2020 was their “Sales Tax Growth” they had become used to each of the previous years.
The City of Sioux Falls has an annual “Tax” revenue stream of roughly $390,000,000 a year, while the other funds come from Federal and State Grants, Loans, TIFS, Bonds, other Federal and State Monetary Funds grabbed.
The CITY OF SIOUX FALLS is one of the most ‘prosperous’ cities in the Nation – it has a net position of almost $2,500,000,000 billion dollars, not even L.A or NYC have net positions that high…
City Government owns tons of LAND which has a high value on the balance sheet. Just look at the Water and Water Reclamation Funds…
For 2022, assessed valuation of real property in the City of Los Angeles was $774 billion (or $774,389,228,127).
Too bad I can’t move my house to LA!
Can you still buy LA Gear? What about British Knights?
I see the Brady house in LA is up for sale again:
https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/the-brady-bunch-house-has-come-on-the-market-for-5-5m/