Presentations on Curbside pickup and Sioux Steel TIF;
Not sure what the garbage presentation is about, but it looks like the garbage haulers are not happy about the changes. You know, if you would have just gave discounts it may not have changed back. But guess what, sometimes being greedy sucks. I don’t have a problem with putting the can at the end of the driveway on pickup day, but why not just offer a discount to customers who do it? Oh, that’s right, that greed thing again.
There is also an update on the TIF for Sioux Steel. As I understand it the original TIF will be rescinded and after changes to the project (not sure what they will be) the TIF will be re-instated. I think the council should send a message and rescind the original TIF and not give them one. We don’t need more office space or hotels downtown, we need affordable housing. If the developer was willing to turn the project into a work force housing development, I think the TIF would be fine.
Software Platform, Mass Transit On-Demand Pilot Project; amendment to introduce a second “Pilot Program†of “SAM on Demand†This pilot project will test to see if on-demand service will improve ridership, Pantonium, Inc. $36K. (I’m wondering if the public is going to get an update about how they continue to milk this bad idea).
Sub Item #11, Convention Center Improvements – Convention Center Vestibule Door Replacement; Sunkota Construction, Inc., $449K (While the mayor bragged about giving a whopping $1 Million in rental assistance last year, he failed to tell folks he plans to spend almost a Half-Million on a door. To be fair, it’s probably a couple of doors. Wouldn’t spending that money on actually marketing Sioux Falls for conventions be better spent)?
Sub Item #12, Greenway and Trail Improvements – Downtown River Greenway Improvements – Phase 3; Agreement for final design, Confluence, $797K (so it costs less to build a door than it does to design a sidewalk. Hmmm).
As I said a few months ago, it was baffling to me why we would give a $94 million dollar TIF to incentivize businesses to come here. First off, it is pretty obvious we don’t need anymore job creators currently;
To find out more about what might be going on, I reached out to Secretary Marcia Hultman, who leads the South Dakota Department of Labor.
“What you are seeing and what we’re hearing anecdotally, the numbers really support,†she said.
They definitely do. The most current number she could pull for me Friday was 23,500 active job openings in the state’s database. Nearly 10,000 of those are in the city of Sioux Falls.
You read it correct, 10,000 available jobs in Sioux Falls, and we want to incentivize business to come here? It’s ludicrous. Factor in our schools are over crowded, affordable housing is a rarity (where we should be investing tax rebates) and building permits are through the roof. If anything we should be giving the tax rebates to the citizens to create more affordable housing and propping up our current infrastructure instead throwing it at Egg Roll factories owned by Koreans.
I also found this interesting in the article;
Another tip: You should list a wage with your opening.
“Statistically, if the wage is posted, even if it’s not the best, those job orders get more activity. If nothing is listed, the assumption is that it’s low,†Hultman said.
Nearly every business I talk to has increased pay, some significantly. Frankly, that’s not a bad thing, to me, in a state that has struggled with persistently low wages in some sectors.
I have often said the city council should pass a city ordinance that any job listed within city limits should have the minimum and maximum pay listed in the ad.
It’s time to end most if not all TIF’s in the city and tax rebates for the supposed (low wage) job creators and start helping the people who live and work in this city with more affordable housing and propping up infrastructure, and we can do it without welfare to big business. This is what happens when you have a partisan greedy mayor on cruise control and a former developer executive running the city as Chief of Staff.
Ironically, when she left the city the first time she met me for coffee. She told me the deciding factor to leave the city, besides the last mayor being a total jackass was that she was forced to write the Sanford Sports Complex TIF which she felt set a bad precedent for TIFs because of it’s size and that it was NOT for housing or blighted property. Funny how her feelings have changed on the Tifiliciousness of TIFs and doesn’t seem to bothered by the bad precedent she set.
UPDATE: I got an update last night. I guess the administration has been pushing hard on property owners along the loop on 11th street to buy the property so they can ‘revitalize’ it. Many property owners are thumbing the mayor and not agreeing to the offers.
A SouthDacola foot soldier reached out to me last night and confirmed something I have speculated about for a while. The city does have a plan to clean up the core and it probably involves a bulldozer and a wrecking ball;
One of those is neighborhood revitalization, and TenHaken today announced a new organizational structure to address it.
The newly created division will combine the city’s code enforcement arms under one entity that reports up through planning and development services. The team, led by Matt Tobias, will address “how do we take care of our core and make neighborhoods cleaner and acquire properties,†TenHaken said.
The bigger vision is to assemble and invest in land and amenities such as parks to create neighborhoods in the center of the city that appeal to residents and businesses, “so people aren’t looking to the ‘burbs but look inward,†he continued. “Some of the best neighborhoods are in the core.â€
Notice the 2 words, ‘acquire properties’. This is essentially code for tearing down affordable housing that can be easily renovated in our core to tear it down instead and turn it into apartments or subsidized houses that don’t fit in the older neighborhoods. There is NO reason that these houses can’t be fixed up for a fraction of the cost and make excellent first time houses or retirement homes, but developers need to make a buck so they want to start from scratch.
They did a presentation on the proposal today at the city council informational meeting, and it had few details and a lot of things needed to be worked out. Councilor Brekke asked about TIFs and more importantly tax rebates. Councilor Erickson ripped them a new one about how the council had very little input on this and how they need to be involved. Yeah, no Sh!t Sherlock, wondering when the council was going to wake up from their Covid Coma and get back to making policy instead pulling a Biden in their basements.
I have been hearing that the city is negotiating purchasing large sections of property in the downtown and core areas that they can prepare for development and sell to large developers for subsidized housing. When I think of cleaning up the core, I think of rehabilitating the existing neighborhoods and houses. If you don’t think these smaller homes are not in demand explain to me why I get 3-4 offers a week on my small 1889 home in central Sioux Falls? BECAUSE AFFORDABLE HOUSING IS IN HIGH DEMAND and I am wondering how bulldozing these properties will address that problem?
I will be curious how this rolls out, but I think the major part of the plan involves a very large Caterpillar.
While the replay is working just fine, when it streamed on the city’s FB page it didn’t start until about 11 minutes in. Even when they are streaming on social media they can’t get the video to work properly.
While Paul did introduce the council, he didn’t take a roll call vote, I wonder if you can even do an official meeting like this;
Section 3.03Â Mayor’s duties and responsibility.
The mayor shall, at the beginning of each calendar year, and may at other times give the council information as to the affairs of the city and recommend measures considered necessary and desirable. The mayor shall preside at meetings of the council, represent the city in intergovernmental relationships, appoint with the advice and consent of the council the members of the citizen advisory boards and commissions, present an annual state of the city message, and perform other duties specified by the council and by article III. The mayor shall be recognized as head of the city government for all ceremonial purposes and by the governor for purposes of military law.
I was pleasantly surprised when he raised an initiative about cleaning up the core, something I have suggested for over a decade. While he was short on details, I welcome it. I asked a couple of councilors if they knew anything about it and they said notta. I would still like to see tax rebates in the initiative, but I will wait for details. While it is good he is working on it, it really should be the job of the city council to push this policy (kind of their job). I know that councilor Brekke has been working on this for several months and it is good to know the mayor has been listening. I don’t care who takes credit for good ideas, as long as they help the city.
He also proposed a Mayor’s Youth Council, while a worthwhile endeavor, telling us he wants input from the youth of the city, I’m wondering when he is going to get input from the adult taxpaying voting citizens? This same mayor has done ZERO coffees, cracker barrels or listening and learning sessions with citizens in his first term. He also moved public input to the back of the council meetings. He may want to hear from the kids in town, but not the adults.
TIFILICIOUS IS GETTING MORE TIFFY
I Also heard today that more TIFs for Downtown developers is coming down the pike in the area around Cherapa Place and the Railroad Redevelopment area. Brace yourselves. I’m still baffled why we are giving out TIFs when this city has a 2% unemployment rate and an affordable housing crisis with building permits going thru the roof. Developer welfare in the shape of growth for growth sake.
COUNCILOR NEITZERT ADMITS TO TRYING TO STALL MEDICAL MARIJUANA IMPLEMENTATION
Not sure how a city councilor can inject themselves on county initiatives or state initiatives, but Greg has;
Sioux Falls City Councilor Greg Neitzert has been researching licensing, locations, and even the number of dispensaries in the city.
“We need to do something in the interim, it wouldn’t be a moratorium, but something is so that we could wait until we have regulations because we don’t even know what the regulatory framework is going to be the counties have to wrestle with this as well are they going to allow people to grow marijuana in the county, that’s their decision, they’re gonna have to decide on that. But cities are also gonna have to make that same determination as well. So we both have our own jurisdictions and then we have our joint jurisdiction. So that’s where we need to work together,†said Neitzert.
Neitzert says he has briefed Mayor Ten Haken on his findings. Whether the city or the county will be ready for the legalization of Medical Marijuana, is yet to be seen.
State law dictates that city’s have to follow those laws. As Commissioner Barth points out;
Barth is frustrated in what he believes to be the stalling of working out the details.
“So, the powers that be, want Minnehaha County to put a moratorium on medical marijuana operations. Now they’ve had since last November, to try to get their ducks in order. They didn’t in fact they did everything they could to prevent it from moving forward. And now we’re getting to the tenth hour, and they’re asking us to take the hit because they have refused to do their job,†said Barth.
Of the fifteen years, he’s been a commissioner, this is the first time he’s seen a template to assist the county to write an ordinance.
“If it just goes into effect. Coming up on July 1 That’s the way it goes,†said Barth.
He is exactly correct, get your poop in a group and figure it out.
• ADA Transition Plan by Sharla Svennes, Assistant City Attorney and Human Relations/ADA Coordinator; Peter Blanck, Ph.D., J.D.  and James G. Felakos, J.D., Blanck Group LLC (I have no idea what this is about, no supporting documents)
• Comprehensive Housing Plan by Jeff Eckhoff, Director of Planning and Development Services; and Matt Tobias, Development Services Manager (I have no idea what this is about either, no supporting documents)
Sub Item #29, South Dakota Research Park, Inc. dba USD Discovery District, Funding Agreement providing innovation focused economic development strategies, development of public-private partnerships and to foster innovation driven industry growth. Actively support economic development and workforce development initiatives. $150K (while this is a good initiative, it would be nice to have a presentation from them on what they are doing instead of just shoving this into a consent agenda item).
Items #24-25, So this is interesting, Sanford’s Golf Shots is transferring it’s liquor license to the Sanford Event Barn, and then in the next item, the Barn is transferring its license to Golf Shots. I’m so glad one of our major health systems in Sioux Falls have all this time to horse around with liquor licenses and their ownership 🙁
Item #26, Most people know that a bar is likely going in the corner space of the Washington Square building on the main floor (even though a roof top bar would have been much cooler). So where has their liquor license been parked while they are waiting to open? Two doors down at Parlour ice cream shop. Funny, that was one of my favorite places to get ice cream last summer, and I never saw a full bar in there 🙁 The lax rules on how licenses can be ‘parked’ is ludicrous and needs to be changed.
Item #53, Second Reading, AN ORDINANCE OF THE CITY OF SIOUX FALLS, SD, REZONING PROPERTY LOCATED NORTH OF W. BENSON RD. AND WEST OF N. MARION RD. FROM THE PO-PUD PEDESTRIAN-ORIENTED PUD DISTRICT TO THE RA-1 APARTMENT RESIDENTIAL—LOW DENSITY AND RA-2 APARTMENT RESIDENTIAL—MODERATE DENSITY DISTRICTS, NO. 14007-2021, AND AMENDING THE OFFICIAL ZONING MAP OF THE CITY OF SIOUX FALLS. This is the rezoning for apartments next to the new Amazon Warehouse. As we know CountCilor Jensen has a financial conflict, and some think Selberg does also. We will see if they both recuse themselves and tell the public what that conflict is. This is a controversial item because the neighbors who have homes out there were lied to by developers, as usual, and of course the planning department plays along and says, ‘You can always ask us questions.’ Here’s one, ‘Is it hard to breathe with your heads stuck up developer’s asses?’
Item #55, 2nd Reading, AN ORDINANCE OF THE CITY OF SIOUX FALLS, SD, AMENDING THE CODE OF ORDINANCES OF THE CITY BY AMENDING CHAPTER 77: PARKING REGULATIONS, SUBCHAPTER: PUBLIC PARKING ADVISORY BOARD. During the 1st reading several councilors suggested that they need to streamline the public boards qualifications.
Item 2E, Rezone for Foundation Park so they can chop up lots and spend our TIF money.
Item 2I, Rezone for Water Reclamation
Item 2J, Expansion of an existing VL Casino. Just what we need 🙁
Item 2K, More details on the expansion of the Sanford Sports Complex;
Item 5A, Rezoning from C1 to C2. This will be just north of the gas station on 18th & Cleveland. I am not sure if there is any neighborhood opposition. But what I find interesting is if you read all the documentation there is not one single mention of Dollar General in the documents. How did I figure it out? It was flagged that way in the document name ‘Dollar Gen.doc’.
This is something I have been railing on over the past couple of years where documentation in the agenda items in all the city’s public meetings is vague and hard to understand. I believe the attorney’s office in cahoots with the clerk’s and planning’s office is doing this on purpose. Why? It all goes back to the HATEFEST of Open and Transparent government.
l3wis 
