Car Dealership tears out wetlands after promising SON neighborhood they would not

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charis-corner

A before and after pictures of Charis corner when an ‘Act of God’ occurs (85th and Audie)

In all fairness nothing under the eyes of the law was done illegally. The car dealership (well at least its owner) got permission from the CORP of Engineers and SF planning department to tear out the wetland behind the dealership and adjacent to the SON neighborhood. The proper forms were filled out.
But according to those who live in the neighborhood, that wasn’t supposed to be the case. There was a promise while developing the car dealership lot that they would leave the wetlands, even improve the look of them, now they are saying they are going to ‘put up a big fountain’. Whatever that means.
This a prime example of how those in power use the back door of government and loopholes to do whatever they want to. Besides the CORP approving this, the city should have never allowed the wetland that served as a retention pond to be torn out knowing the issues with drainage in the neighborhood.
Our planning department is increasingly becoming the laughing stock of our city.

City of Sioux Falls Internal Audit on the Development Foundation; show us measured outcomes

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Giving the Sioux Falls Development Foundation tax dollars each year is a debate of it’s own. My stickler with handing over this money for workforce development is that we never see what kind of results there is. I have often called the practice as ‘Welfare for Want Ads’. If you pay good wages and are a good employer, workers will seek you out. If you have to ask the government to fund your want ads because you are struggling finding workers, maybe you are not a good employer to begin with. If you can’t find ‘qualified’ workers, maybe offer a worker training program. I often hear these same business owners and the Chamber scream about the FREE market, then turn around and ask tax payers to bail their asses out. So which is it?

devconn

Developer doesn’t get it

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The Oakview neighborhood was successful, for today anyway;

Lloyd Company plans to withdraw its application to rezone this land at 6th and Bahnson at the next city council meeting after hundreds of neighbors complained.

So what were those main concerns the neighbors had? They were really simple; density, drainage, traffic, crime. They have gone to several council meetings and expressed these concerns to the council after the Planning Commission was tone deaf;

. . . it’s just more about the density and the affects of that rippling down to water, traffic and overall safety,” Burke said.

So how did the developer respond to these very simple requests, that’s right, by ignoring the 700 Pound Gorilla(s) in the room;

Lloyd Companies went on to say it has a long standing history in Sioux Falls of building and managing apartment communities that provide safe, clean and affordable housing.

The statement goes on to say ‘While we appreciate the neighborhood’s concerns and have withdrawn our request to rezone the land, despite having taken the time to address key points from the neighborhood, we know that the end result of our project moving forward would have meant that families had an opportunity to live in an area where their kids could get to and from schools, a community center, a park and a library safely – which is something that we believe is incredibly important and should all want for our community.

Huh? The neighbors never really brought up affordable housing, but they did talk about density. Their major concerns were evident. Drainage and Traffic.

Why is it so difficult for developers or better yet our planning department and planning commission to wrap their heads around the fact Sioux Falls is built on a pancake? It can only soak up so much syrup before it starts running off the sides of the plate. It time the planning department faced the facts and grow up already.

Is anyone listening at city hall? Nope.

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After all the hoopla about transparency over the $25 million bond for a city administration building, you would think the administration would get the picture about transparency. They still don’t have a clue;

Details of the proposals aren’t public, but the city plans to contribute as much as $17.9 million for the project, which city planners hope to break ground on next year.

“Once a selection has been made, and we have an executed contract, we can share more information,” said Scott Rust, purchasing manager for the city.

The developers aren’t talking either, saying they are bound by a confidentiality agreement included in the city’s RFQ.

What!? You are going to spend $17.9 million of our money and you cannot share the details until AFTER a contract is cut? Not only are they NOT filling us in on the proposals they don’t even want to share details of a contract.

And they wonder why almost 6,500 people signed the petition.

I guess we now know what the development foundation is doing with our taxdollars

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Blowing it on a hired hand;

The Sioux Falls Development Foundation just hired Lon Clemensen as the new Vice President of Workforce Development. With 30 years of experience in Human Resource management, Clemensen feels he can help fill that worker shortage.

“My plan is to work with education groups, government groups, social services, non-profits and business leaders to talk about those challenges,” Clemensen said.

Great! That’s all we need is another hired gun to tell us what we are doing wrong. And the advice he gives?

Clemensen says Sioux Falls has competitive wages, but the city’s quality of life is the biggest selling point.

LOL. Sure they are competitive, if you are trying to decide whether you want to work at Taco Johns or McDonalds.

“I believe if we get them into the city, show them around and show them all the attributes that we have in the city that’s a major factor,” Clemensen said. “Probably even larger than wages.”

Yeah, try to hide our dirty little secret, low wages. I’m no economist, but it seems people who make a living wage tend have a better quality of life (because they can actually buy things which contributes to our economy).

South Dakota ranks 48 (out of 51) for average salary ($29,420) and when adjusted for cost of living we rank 43 ($33,356). But hey, we don’t have a ‘wage problem’ (this information appears to be from 2014).

Maybe he should hold his ‘family day’ idea in the parking lot of Feeding South Dakota. If it rains there is plenty of room to hold the festivities inside the building, they will just have to rearrange the 40 thousand pounds of mac and cheese.