Another consultant, the RR relocation project burn barrel just got bigger

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Here we go, seems no one in city government is smart enough to know what to do with 10 acres of undeveloped land downtown, even though developers and the city have been successfully developing projects downtown for over 100 years now;

“The City is hiring a consultant to work with us to ensure the redevelopment of this land is done in the best way possible,” says Mike Cooper, Director of Planning and Building Services. “Most cities never have this type of opportunity—to reshape the heart of their downtown—so we want to make sure we get it right.”

I’ve said the best way to develop the land would be to let free enterprise shape it. Once BNSF hands over the keys to the property in 2017, we drive down to ACE hardware and pick up a couple of FOR SALE signs and stick them in the ground.

Why should the taxpayers be on the hook for even more expenditures cleaning up the site, and coming up with proposals. Wasn’t the $27 million of Federal tax dollars enough? Especially since the tracks and traffic are really going NO WHERE. What kind of grand development ideas is the consultant going to have? You can’t build residential because the trains will still be rolling through, maybe even more often.

This sounds like another back door scam so that certain developers get their hands on the land by shaping the RFP’s in advance to fit their already conceived ideas. I say put it for sale, let the adjacent property owners have first dibs, and if they decline open it up to other developers. We aren’t building a resort in the Cayman Islands, we are taking a brown field, scraping the top layer off and making it available for someone to build on. This isn’t rocket science and certainly not worth the expense of a consultant.

I still maintain that since we did nothing to limit the traffic of trains downtown by moving forward on this project, we have accomplished nothing but blowing $27 million dollars as BNSF walks away with a gigantic smile on their face. You’re welcome Mr. Buffet.

 

Think train backups are bad now?

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Wait until they are down to two tracks downtown;

We’ve all been there — stuck at a railroad crossing waiting for the cars to pass. But imagine waiting at a crossing for a stopped train, for hours.

That’s what neighbors in a development north of I-90 off Kiwanis say is happening to them.

Neighbors say it’s happened several times; a train will be stopped at the railroad crossing for several minutes, and at times for more than an hour.

The latest stopped train was just Thursday night. Traffic was backed up in both directions for about 45 minutes.

 

In the past few years, Parsons says the BNSF Railway trains are stopping more frequently and for longer periods of time.

We are going to see this all over town once the rail yard closes Downtown. While we blew $27 million of Federal Tax Dollars so we could have 10 measly acres of development, we are really not solving the problem. Two of the Four tracks will remain, so the train traffic will continue, and you are going to see a lot of shuffling around.

Photo Club with Chuck Luden

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Our $27,000,000.00 dollar purchase!

A former (?) city employee nails it on TIF’s and the ridiculous RR purchase downtown;

The city’s railroad property deal has been completed at a cost of $27 million to the American taxpayer, which equates to $69 per square foot. It’s not too hard to determine who received the best part of this deal and why Congress eliminated earmark legislation.

Tax incentive financing may have been needed to jump start downtown, but it is probably no longer needed. The footprint of those entities, who enjoy all of the city services but pay no taxes, continues to expand at the expense of the taxpayer.

In the event that we cannot receive a fair market value for the property, or if we cannot build without tax incentives, the best use for the property might be a park. At least that would provide some type of benefit to the general public.

I have a better idea, we rescind on the whole deal.

EC Siding with Mussolini & Rails Sioux Falls city council public input 9/8/15

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[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBBpwzx13Nc[/youtube]

Cameraman Bruce was busy during the past week trying to put the HandiCam in the right places and it opened up more questions as usual. So our cameraman went up to the City Council Public input to ask some more questions. Actually why don’t more media persons go up there and ask questions? Hmmmm….

SIRE is always on the top of Bruce’s list. As users of SIRE have been finding out, it does not work. Got that? We have been promised so many things and still months after the server broke somewhere in SIREland without a backup, we’re still dead in the water. After the month long effort to stop us from downloading the video for our reports, they finally broke SIRE. Now they can’t fix it, even a little bit because someone forgot to save a backup of the original working software code. If the administration had not been pressuring staff to block our efforts they could have been doing backups? Call us crazy….

Our chief marketing office sent out a press release based on a Forbes magazine piece letting all of know Sioux Falls was a wasteland before April 2010. We in Sioux Falls are being ruled by a strongman CEO, kind of like 1920’s Italy. It reminded him to tell all in attendance, Mussolini also made the trains run on time but what good came of it.

Q: What’s the structure of the Sioux Falls government?

Huether: We have a “strong mayor” form of government. I am basically the C.E.O. or the president of a large company, and that company is the City of Sioux Falls. We have roughly 1,200 city employees and 12 department heads, and a substantial budget. We’re responsible of running the day-to-day activities of a city with 170,000 people, and a metropolitan area with about 250,000.

The City Council operates under a Home Rule Charter and needs to define its place in city government. The Council is the legislative and policy making body of the city of Sioux Falls. The administration is allowed to do what the Charter and the Council will let it do. Sioux Falls became a strong mayor form of government when the Council let mayors roll over them without a fight.

The Sioux Falls city government and Council are under a gag order issued by Fiddle Faddle. The administration wishes it could be permanent? So let’s discuss the reason why. The siding on the EC. The public is being locked out and MJ Dalsin are being locked in a settlement agreement no one will ever see. The agreement does what? Protect the not so innocent? It appears we will never know who is at fault, how much it cost now, who will pay to fix the mess later and MJ Dalsin is being made the scapegoat? The City Attorney’s huff and puff and bluff session from last Wednesday just proves it. We have been waiting for the paperwork to be filed so we can see what grounds the fight is over. It reminds us of the 3 Little Pigs fairy tale but in this case. it’s the rusty EC being blown down.

Sunday’s Argus Leader Events Center editorial http://www.argusleader.com/story/opin… opened up a great deal of room for discussion about the city’s chief marketing officer and the way the city is run. Thank you Argus Leader editorial board. Now let’s have the discussion.

The upgrades to the ‘NEW’ staging yards have begun

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With a crisp, hot and messy $27 million dollar check in the clutches of the Railroad, they have already started on rail yard staging ground part II, except it is not on the edges of town, but more centralized then ever. While it has been used for probably as long as the 8th street location, it is not as glamorous or as close to a Hilton, in fact it is only a few feet away from a refugee church, a mediocre sandwich shop, Avera’s parking ramp and about two blocks from where I write this blog. New drainage and RR ties are going in. As we all suspected, freeing up the 10 acres for a parking lot downtown will only transfer the rail traffic to other parts of downtown (that no one cares about or has to see). Rail traffic will probably increase (next to a major hospital and main north/south traffic route).

The relocation project has accomplished NOTHING! All it has done is create more headaches for people when dealing with train traffic and bilked $27 million from federal taxpayers. If the mayor thinks this is one of his greatest accomplishments, he must be working in quality assurance for the Sioux Santee tribe growing facility.