Not quite sure if this violates campaign rules, but it sure looks suspicious. If it was a fundraiser and had an entry donation, that would be different. Hoping he will put on a FREE kegger event soon at one of our fine micro-breweries.
The City Council is getting a presentation on Tuesday about the proposal;
Imagine my surprise after over a decade of me pleading with any city councilor or mayor that would listen, the city is exploring a plan to give no interest loans from $10-$30K for home improvement in the core (notice there is NO agenda or minutes from the October meeting. Was it cancelled?) From the Argus;
The Accessible Housing Advisory Board (AHAB) met earlier this month to discuss a housing action plan policy using Tax Increment Financing (TIF) to help alleviate housing costs in the coming years.
Usually, a TIF incentivizes developers to construct buildings and make other private investments on sites that without TIF funding would otherwise not be developed, according to Family Housing Fund, a housing information group in Minnesota. The TIF would mean long-term investment in certain neighborhoods and properties.
Recommendations coming out of the board, which brings together community stakeholders in Sioux Falls’ housing sector, will eventually move to city council for final approval and implementation of housing solutions in the following months.
Homes considered for the TIF consideration and given priority for public housing help would include homes built before 1980 in the core of the city, which is bordered by Marion Road, 49th Street, Sycamore Avenue and 60th Street North.
Ironically the city admits that we have a lot of low wage jobs in this town, and more coming;
Part of the proposal also included a rental repair loan option, which would offer $10,000 per unit at five years, no-interest. In addition, homeowners could apply for up to $30,000 in no-interest, deferrable loans to repair their own homes to increase their value.
“It’s a great thing to offer as there’s still people living paycheck-to-paycheck and not able to keep their properties up,†said Brent Tucker, director of housing development for Affordable Housing Solutions.
Tucker said public to private funds help ease the burden of home costs, though the loans do come with heavy stipulations.
“To truly create affordable housing, we all need to work together, especially with Amazon, CJ Foods and others,” Tucker said. “Since they’ll bring in those folks who will make 80% of median income.”
Mr. Tucker is an awesome city employee, he helped me with a community development loan around 15 years ago and walked me through the process and was very helpful. I will warn people who apply, you have to do a lot of the leg work yourself, but it is well worth it. Getting an interest free loan to repair your home isn’t FREE money, but it kind of is. You can also apply the payment of the loan when you sell so you may not have to make any short term payments. If they factor in TIFs, you will also get tax rebates for home repairs.
While I could certainly go on a rant that this could have been done 2 decades ago (community development loans have been around for a long time, but there really isn’t a strong marketing push to get them), at least they are moving in the right direction now. I would suggest that the city hires some part-time people, like retirees to knock on the doors in neighborhoods that could use this program and help them with the initial application. There has to be outreach for this to work. The city will also have to pony up with curb and gutter, street repairs, water and sewer and updating street lights.
We will see how this plays out. Cross your fingers.
You would think normal public officials would be putting out videos about road improvements and cleaning up neighborhoods, nope, they like to brag about TIFs and giving tax rebates to wealthy developers to build parking ramps and condos.
Since the CRC rejected proposals from citizens the council is going to take a stab at it. While I don’t agree with some of the proposals, I do commend them for putting it on the ballot and letting the voters decide instead of them since most of their amendments are bad ideas like runoffs in council races and moving public input to the back of the meeting.
Let’s look at the proposals, mostly coming from a couple of short-timers;
Item #13, Raising mayoral pay to be in line with director pay ($195K). This is of course is a back door effort to raise councilor pay. Council pay I believe is 15% of mayoral pay, but don’t quote me on that, which would raise their salaries to $29K up $10K a year. Councilors have been butt hurt for a long time because they don’t get paid what the county commissioners do. I actually think $19K a year is too much for the bare minimum of work they do. I actually think director pay should be in line with mayoral pay, not the other way around. Sioux Falls pays directors better than almost any city in the region, and we are the only city with a Medical Director that happens to be the highest paid city employee. If this goes to voters it will fail at least by 60% if not more.
Item #14, City Council terminating city attorney. Ironically they are also proposing allowing the city council to fire the city attorney. I support this because the City Attorney should be representing the city with the best interest of the taxpayers NOT the mayor or even the city council. I have even suggested that the City Attorney and Police Chief should be elected. I’m not sure how citizens would vote on this, it could be close. I think some people feel that since the mayor appoints the city attorney he should be the only one to fire him. That is a misconception, because the council already has to approve the appointment so they should be able to fire the city attorney also. I heard a rumor that this is coming up because our current head city attorney really blows at his job and the council has been very frustrated with him.
Item #15, Bounce Back for head city attorney. The city council has been on this kick lately of bouncing directors back. It’s complete BS! Directors are NOT union employees, so they have no protections if terminated. The reason is because they have a 6-Figure salary and enormous benefits package. By allowing them to ‘bounce back’ to their previous job seems like a non-manager union perk. Unfortunately this item WILL NOT BE VOTED ON BY CITIZENS, THIS IS A COUNCIL DECISION. My argument is that in the private sector when Bob gets promoted to a department manager after being an assistant manager, people below him get promoted, and if he fails at the job and gets put back in his old position it has a domino effect on the employees below him which can cause a lot of resentment and contribute to low morale. In the real world when you apply to be a manager and you can’t handle the job, you go bye bye or move to another department. Why would the city want to keep on a city attorney who is NOT qualified to be the lead attorney but good enough for an assistant? If you can’t cut it as the top city attorney, you should get your walking papers.
Like I said already, I’m glad to see the council is allowing the citizens to vote on the first two items, I just think they are lousy ideas that will mostly fail, proving just out of touch our supposed leaders are.
A few years back on a couple of occasions there was a very public push for a concrete company in Sioux Falls wanting to buy the Sioux Empire Fairgrounds because of the rich quarry reserves below. It was rejected by the County Commission. The fairgrounds are county property, and while they do have some infrastructure cost sharing with the city, the actual property was gifted to the County by the Lyon family. I may be wrong on my history but I think when the land was gifted for the fair it was farmland out of the city limits.
There were two issues with the sale a few years ago. 1) The Lyon family did NOT want it sold for a quarry and 2) The County didn’t have a plan to replace the fairgrounds.
Moving forward, the company has supposedly renewed their appeal for the property, according to one of my county sources. This time around they are claiming the Lyon family is on board, but my source is telling me the commission cannot approve the sale because the commission’s counsel has told them they cannot legally sell it for that use. The other issue is where will the SE Fair be moved to? And what would it cost to replace the grounds? The suggestion floating around is to just put a big tent up each year for the fair. How festive in a 1920’s Ringling Brothers sort of way.
While I could care less if we have a fair each year (just brings up bad memories of being in 4-H and how much I hated it) my concern is having a gigantic hole in west central Sioux Falls. I also wonder what the city would think about that attractive hole?
We will see how public and transparent this battle becomes.
l3wis