It’s rare that I give Mayor Poops props, but he made some interesting comments about density and our core (FF 12:00). The only problem is that he has had more then 3 years to do something with the help of the do-nothing council. He mentions that we need to do a better job of building density in our core. DING! DING! DING! This wasn’t the first Mayor to try to mansplain this issue. Mayor Munson actually took a stab at it when he created the Pettigrew Heights neighborhood and started the rebuilding of Downtown. The problem was when Bucktooth & Bowlcut took the baton he just focused on the immediate Downtown. Fast forward to Paul and the story behind the scenes is that he has been talking to core property owners around the downtown area, the problem, as rumor would have it is that Paul wants to try to strong arm these owners into selling property to the city so he can bulldoze it and turn it around to his rich developer friends. This is what happens when you have a COS that used to be a developer executive. Most of those owners have told them they will redevelop on their own without the help of the city.
The bigger issue with this is that the public, the city council and these owners all need to come to the table and put together a strategy, and the process needs to be very open and transparent. Right now those meetings, like the MED MJ ordinance discussions are happening behind closed doors, and as I understand it are failing miserably.
I’m not sure what it will take to get this mayor to understand open government, he just doesn’t, and neither does the council or the city attorney’s office.
The only way we will will ever succeed with this core redevelopment is if we open the books, unfortunately I don’t think that will ever happen with the current administration.
While the almost 5 hour meeting last night had many fireworks from the Med MJ ordinance discussion (this was only 1st Reading) towards the beginning of the meeting they approved TIF #25 with almost zero discussion (they moved it up so the VIP wealthy developer getting a handout wouldn’t have to sit thru all the people’s REAL business).
Besides the same lame brain presentation from the Planning Director about the TIF itself only one speaker emerged to defend the TIF, and it wasn’t the developer. In fact the developer has said NOTHING about the TIF except when he made a presentation to the council at an informational meeting. His daughter did say a handful of words when the Planning Commission approved the TIF, but the developer himself has said NOTHING at the 2 readings of this ordinance. Not even a please and thank you for getting this handout that the rest of SF property tax payers will have to make up for. Of course, why should he? All of those negotiations were done in secret over the past several years, this is also why you didn’t hear a peep from the councilors either, just a gigantic sound of 7 whaps on the dais with a rubber stamp. (Marshall Selberg was absent)
Wouldn’t it be great if getting food stamps was that easy?
So who was the only defender last night? Joe Batcheller, Director of Downtown Sioux Falls. While Joe and I are on good terms, even if I disagree with him about bringing snakes to outdoor events (he thinks it is fine) 😊 we also disagree on TIFs. As a trained urban planner, Joe adamantly thinks they are good thing. He also even makes the tired old argument I hear councilors make ‘TIFs may not work well in other communities, but golly gee they work great here’. The problem with the argument is that we have NO economic or financial evidence of that, NO studies have been done on TIFs in SF or SD that shows an actual benefit to the public.
Which brings us to another point Joe made. He said this TIF was justified because we are getting a Return on Investment (ROI). I’m not sure a parking ramp (this is what most of the TIF will be spent on) that can only be used by the public on nights and weekends is much of an ROI when you consider that the Bunker Ramp is mostly empty at night and barely filled during the day, we will have another parking ramp sitting at the Sioux Steel Project and my long term argument is parking ramps really probably won’t be needed in the next decade. The irony of it all is that by the time this TIF runs out in approximately 20 years, it will probably NOT be a parking ramp.
Joe also made the argument that TIFs are not ‘Handouts’. I’m not sure what else you would call them. TIFs are essentially a tax rebate you get to use on your private property. The developer builds a parking ramp that they will be using during the day, and likely charge for access and they get that ramp paid for by getting a rebate on the $25 million dollar taxes they are supposed to be paying to the county, the school district and the city while raising taxes on the rest of us due to the total valuation of the project. It would be like you personally getting a $500 dollar property tax rebate to fix your front door. While that benefits YOUR property, it has very little benefit to the tax payers who have to pay their full tax bill, while also supplementing your rebate. Sure they throw us a few crumbs saying the TIF will also build roads (to their private project, to their benefit) and we get to use the parking for the Levitt (even though I have yet to see a parking issue at the concerts even when the lawn is packed) the true beneficiary of this REBATE is the developer and his investors, this is why it truly is a HANDOUT.
The most egregious part about the almost $200 million dollars in TIFs the city council has gleefully handed out this year is that this could ALL be done with private investment. The money is there. It has been proven by the past decade of record breaking building permits that have been issued to contractors in this city who have asked for ZERO tax breaks. Besides the public building permits, I think most of the private permits issued by the planning department are 100% privately funded. It would be a great presentation and study done by our Planning Department, but of course that would shoot holes in the whole NEEDING TIFs to succeed in Sioux Falls. Believe it or not, I think that is fantastic that private business, can invest privately while providing good jobs without a government HANDOUT.
Which brings us to Joe’s last point, that was so ridiculous when he said it, I laughed for about 5 minutes. Joe said it was important to remember that Cherapa II’s developer was taking on 100% of the risk for this approximately $350 million dollar project.
Really Joe?!!! He should be commended for that after getting this handout from the city?
Isn’t that how the Free Market system is supposed to work? Oh never mind, in Sioux Falls it’s called Developer Socialism. You give us massive tax breaks and we will make sure we spend it on us and never present data that shows otherwise.
And lastly, Jeff, a Thank You would have been nice.
The Argus did a story about how homeowners are not real keen on having apartments built next to them out in the burbs;
“This sentiment that apartment owners and apartment dwellers are scumbags has got to stop in this community,†said Councilor Christine Erickson. “It’s just not what it is.â€
I guess it depends on the location and the condition of the apartment. There is also a difference between $1,100 dollar a month apartments and HUD subsidized housing. I agree with Erickson, apartment dwellers who pay their own rent are NOT scumbags, and this city should do everything in their power to encourage more apartment dwellings for working folks.
The problem here is NOT the homeowners complaining, the problem is the location of the apartments. The large developers want to make a quick buck, so they prefer to build next to homes in a cornfield instead of in the core of the city where we should be building up density. This is what happens when you allow a hospital to bulldoze an entire core neighborhood instead fixing up these core neighborhoods. I know, I sound like a broken record.
As for the neighbors complaining, some of their statements are pretty ignorant. I lived in 7 different apartments in Sioux Falls before I bought my home, there was nothing wrong with it, and there is nothing wrong with me living by apartments now in my home. The bigger issue with these ignorant (and sometimes racist) complaints is that it is helping the developers that are pushing to skip several steps in the zoning process;
There’s always been hesitation from neighbors when they hear an apartment could be going up nearby, said Jill Madsen, vice-chair of the South Dakota Multi-housing Association.
But once all the meetings and votes are done, the construction is completed and the tenants have moved in, she said, “most people don’t even … there aren’t any issues going forward.â€
There has been a rumor going around that this organization along with developers are pushing to change city ordinances and state law so that developers no longer have to ask for permission from the neighbors and can just go directly to the planning office to rezone the property and get building permits. No notification and no neighborhood meetings. This of course goes against how things have always been done, but it also lacks transparency. The proponents of this supposed change will of course use all the dreadful comments from homeowners to plead their case for less transparency and essentially ruin the process for the rest of us.
I have felt the planning department has wanted to sidestep the commission and council on a whole host of things. Just look at TIFs, they used to be for only blight and affordable housing until the state legislature changed the law to pretty much make them for anything, and since then they have been handing them out like candy in Sioux Falls, raising the taxes on the rest of us while getting NO economic benefit from the projects. If we allow the state legislature to make these new guidelines you will see apartments go up on every street corner and rent go through the roof;
With a housing market that’s often pricing out even those lucky enough to actually find a home for sale and multiple companies touting the thousands of jobs they hope to bring to Sioux Falls in just the next five years, city staff say qualms about multi-family housing simply don’t mesh with the reality of what the city of nearly 200,000 people needs.
The city administration is getting nervous because they have enticed all these employers with ridiculous tax breaks and now they have no workers and no place for them to live, so they will try any desperate attempt to get up apartments as fast as possible. I have also felt that homebuilders and realtors have artificially inflated home prices, which is going on across the country. The value of my home went up around 37% in ONE YEAR!
I can almost guarantee the Amazon parking lot will be one big campground when it opens.
Slow, measured growth is way better than the fire sale we have been having. Growth for growth sakes never turns out well, and we are in for quite a ride over the next few years.
Earlier this year, the Fargo City Commission declined Hyde’s request for $5 million in tax increment financing for site development for the project but he says he was able to negotiate both a lower price for the property and the bid for site work and was able to get the model to still work.
Pretty crazy how the developer could figure out a way to invest in the property even after the TIF was denied. Even this story from September 2020 shows how Amazon turned down incentives in Fargo;
Amazon has reportedly not asked for any local tax breaks.
While Amazon technically didn’t get direct TIFs or tax breaks from the City of Sioux Falls either, the park they are at has gotten millions in infrastructure upgrades from taxpayers and will continue to benefit from the $94 million dollar TIF recently given to the park. I have argued for a long time that the developers in this community have plenty of private investment without needing TIFs. But when you turn on the candy trough, they all come to feed. If I were the mayor or a city councilor I would have ended TIFs a long time ago in this city, the welfare program for the super rich.
Don basically talks about how the city attorney’s office did an outstanding job getting the Sioux Steel easement pushed through. Pretty crazy to hear a city director brag about getting the city council to possibly violate open meeting laws by voting on an agenda item without giving the public the whole story. We still have NO idea how this suddenly became park land or what that process was.
Also note that if you watched the council meeting the assistant city attorney said the council could vote to release that information, but guess when they were told they could vote to release the information? Five minutes before the 2nd reading. Yeah, now that’s transparency.
Also note that the first phase of the project will be the residential portion and not the hotel and entertainment part. Go figure.
