Update on the origination of the 2nd Penny

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lh

After digging around through some news articles, it seems the 2nd penny (and zoned snow removal) came to fruition in 1983 due to the efforts of the first female elected city commissioner Loila Hunking, who was in charge of public works. The 2nd penny was supposed to be ‘temporary’.

While Hunking was re-elected in 1986 to the commission, she was defeated in 1989, and in that short 6 years, the 2nd penny already became permanent, and one of it’s first projects that wasn’t dedicated to streets was cleaning up Falls Park.

I have not seen Loila in years. I first met her in 1992 while working for late state legislator Pat Pilcher at her print shop downtown in the former Lewis Drug.

Loila is an amazing person. Many of my political opinions about abortion and women’s fair pay were shaped around listening to Pat and Loila chew the fat.

Maybe someone needs to hook up a DaCola interview with her?

Let’s have a REAL discussion about Enterprise Funds

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“I’m giving it all I got Captain, but I’m afraid the EC won’t be profitable this year.”

Here’s an idea I would like to pitch to DaCola readers; let’s expand the use of enterprise funds.

You are probably asking what the hell I am talking about?

Let’s look at the city’s argument behind using enterprise funds for water and sewer, they feel the ‘users’ should pay for these infrastructure upgrades instead of coming from the 2nd penny (what they are not telling you is that they want to also use the funds to build NEW infrastructure, like Foundation Park, that has little to do with normal maintenance, operations and upgrades.)

It’s not a bad concept, so why not apply it to other entities in Sioux Falls government? Why not pay to play at these facilities also;

• City Golf Courses

• Swimming Pools (especially the indoor pool)

• The Arena, Orpheum, Washington Pavilion and especially the Events Center.

Why not take the fees from users and put that money into a fund that helps pay for maintenance and even debt service? Not only does it make sense, the tax payers would truly see just how valuable our quality of life projects are to us.

In fact, I don’t think the city golf courses have ever lost money, maybe tie all the Parks Department entities that charge fees together (Golf, Swim and Great Bear).

Then at the end of each year, each of the funds could ‘borrow’ or be subsidized by the 2nd penny if they come up short. This would show us a true ‘balance sheet’ and go along with that whole ‘transparency in government’ thingy.

What do you think?

 

Who will replace Darrin Smith? Or will there be a replacement?

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While studying the city management salary increases over the past five years, we came across some interesting title changes. People were hop-scotching back and forth between the public works department and engineering. Not sure if this had to do with pay adjustments or what. It kind of looked like an accounting game.

Either way, there seems to be a discussion going on similar in the community development office. Will Darrin Smith have to be replaced or will restructuring of the department eliminate a Czar of community development?

With the new council rolling in, and the change of rules when appointing department heads (council must also approve the mayoral appointment of the director, no matter the size of the department). Could be interesting to see what kind of extra duties some of the other directors may have to take on to avoid a mayoral appointment.

Of course this wouldn’t be the first time the mayor would be playing hard and fast with the rules.