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City of Sioux Falls to give $350K interest free loan to developer

l3wis 7Comments

On the Sioux Falls city council agenda Tuesday night you will see a little tidbit in item #7, approval of contracts, sub-item #4;

Don’t be fooled by the title, this interest free loan is a pass through from the Feds for affordable housing to Lloyd Companies. I wonder if someone will ask exactly what the rents will be for this supposed affordable housing. Once again, developer welfare for a developer that doesn’t need it.

Just imagine if we gave interest free loans to people in the core of our city to help clean up their property? How far would this money go? Maybe we could clean up 50-100 properties with sidewalk repair, roof and siding repair, windows, landscaping? Let’s go even a step farther and give mini-TIFs to property owners in these affected neighborhoods in the form of property tax relief.

I truly believe the death of Tracy Saboe could have been avoided if we would have started cleaning up these neighborhoods over 12 years ago when first proposed by Mayor Munson. NOTHING has been done. So now crime increases while wealthy developers continue to cash in on projects that do nothing to prevent crime. But hey we have a $115 million dollar dented up events center (that sits empty while we pay a $10 million dollar a year mortgage on it). A $26 million dollar bunker ramp (that has yet to open) and a $20+ million dollar TIF to a project that is in flux while we go ahead with a $11 million dollar bond to build a greenway project around it (even with speculation if the project will ever happen). Why do we keep blowing the money on welfare for wealthy developers instead of helping hardworking Sioux Falls residents to clean up their properties and ultimately their neighborhoods? Because of the greedy fools we continue to elect.

So instead of using the money to clean up these existing neighborhoods we are using it to tear down a nature area and create more density where it is NOT needed.

You are going to see a lot of this over the next two years especially with a banker on the council and only two councilors left to ask the tough questions and a mayor who is more concerned about cashing in on his 5G investments(?) (That’s the rumor going around that our local media refuses to look into because the mayor has a tight grip you know where).

Count-cilor Alex Jensen SF City Council Sioux Falls

Count-cilor Jensen BOUGHT his seat

l3wis 5Comments

The newest member of the RS6 spent more than any council candidate in the history of the city. In fact, it is 5 years worth of salary for a city councilor. Also remember, we have not seen the final financial report, that will be at year end. It will be interesting to see what the final amount is. Astounding for a seat that pays around $19K a year and has little power. So far he approximately spent $8 per vote.

The bigger question is will Alex recuse himself on votes for the city’s bank, which he works for. And what kind of rezones will he vote on that his employer is financing? This wasn’t just about getting rid of a pesky city councilor, this was about the players in town having their own councilor on the dais.

He was bought and paid for. I hope it was worth it. Likely not.

Alex Jensen Count-cilor Alex Jensen Elections SF City Council Sioux Falls

Count-cilor Jensen’s Campaign Treasurer(?) tells us why Alex won

l3wis 4Comments

Funny how the treasurer who told me all along he wasn’t Alex’s campaign manager knows so much about the strategy that was used. Matt was Alex’s campaign manager and everyone knew it. It was one of the lousiest lies I have ever heard in a campaign. But telling the truth doesn’t win elections.

While I will agree with some of his points, let’s simply this;

• Raised a buttload of money (from the banksters and develpers) and spent around 10X more than his opponent.

• Campaigned 3X longer than his opponent.

• Used the extra time from a delayed election to campaign more to primary voters that don’t normally vote in city elections.

• Used the list of Mayor TenHaken’s supporters from 2018 to turn the tide in the SE districts. I figured they were going to do this early on. I got tipped off by a mole that was the list they were working from months ago.

There was no grand mystery here, it was really simple math that made Jensen the 6th member of the RS5. MONEY! And lots of it.

Elections SF City Council Sioux Falls Theresa Stehly

Stehly lost due to uninformed voters

l3wis 21Comments

There has been a story circulating in our local rag that Stehly lost the race because her supporters did not show up and she was mean to Neitzert.

Hogwash!

First off, Stehly and Jensen both probably got more votes than any city councilor in the history of our city. Just because Theresa lost by 97 votes doesn’t mean her support wasn’t there.

As for Neitzert, she did the right thing by fighting him on all of his misguided votes on the administration building, the internal auditor and the Bunker Ramp and many more issues. If anything, her battles with him helped her.

I have said if the election was held on April 14th it would have been a landslide for her. Why? Because the normal percentage of voters who pay attention to city politics would have shown up and cast the appropriate informed vote. Covid threw a wrench in it. Not to mention the lackluster training of the poll workers, something virtually not brought up in the hit piece and the enormous amount of money from the banksters and developers spent on her opposing candidate.

This did not clearly happen. A bunch of uninformed, partisan, primary voters showed up to elect a ‘real’ establishment Republican to the city council, not having a clue that this was a non-partisan race. They may have been confused why there wasn’t an R or D behind their names. It was a perfect storm to get the partisan hack clems to show up to vote that think city government is about party politics. It is not, but this current administration and his lackeys have turned it into us against them.

Local government is about all of us. Republican, Democratic, Independent, minority, gay, straight, religious or non-religious and those of us who just don’t give a damn. Theresa lost because 98 more ignorant fools voted for the other guy. The math is really that simple.

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