I guess I missed the first part of theinformational meeting where financial director Mr. Pritchett revealed some interesting things going on. I appreciate Shawn’s honesty.
The first thing he reveals is that Sioux Empire Community Theatre owes SMG or Global, or whatever they are calling themselves these days $74K for past rentals of the Orpheum and that they have an agreement to pay $1,000 a month until it is paid up. What a deal! The Pavilion, which runs the Orpheum now requires the SECT to pay rent for events now with 50% up front.
Then there is the Event Center that actually pulled in less revenue last year, but get this, made a bigger profit (according to Global). I guess when you don’t have to pay anybody (part-timers) to work events (because very few are going on) you make more money. Go figure. I wonder if we mothballed the place we could make even more money!
We also found out why we had to ‘repair’ the HVAC system at the Denty, because it has severely malfunctioned causing leaks in the roof and damage to the ceiling. So now we have the siding and the HVAC system, makes you wonder what other things we cut corners on. A former Denty employee told me once “Don’t lean too hard on the interior walls, you may fall thru.”
Speaking of leaky stuff, the Pavilion is requesting around $6 million to fix the roof and railing on the roof. Where are they getting their bids? Certainly not from Mitchell Roofing 🙂
We also got to hear about the deteriorating Sioux Falls Stadium and what we are going to do with that money pit, but that discussion really didn’t go anywhere – as usual.
Yet we need to charge non-profits who actually bring successful events into Sioux Falls that drive the economy $70 an hour, per officer, for police protection. Go figure. As one of my former co-workers used to say about our boss/owner of the company we worked for, “He’s concerned about pennies as dollars are flying out the window.”
I first want to make a correction. According to council staff the police department is the department that is pushing for this and NOT Councilor Kiley (though I have heard differently). That aside, several councilors questioned charging non-profits for this due to economic impact at today’s informational meeting. Councilors Erickson and Starr were the most vocal. Starr went on to ask Deputy Chief of Staff, TJ Nelson if the city would be giving rebates to the non-profits putting on these events because of the massive economic impact.
Erickson talked about youth sporting events.
There was some discussion about maybe separating non-profit from for-profit events (which makes sense). They all agreed that more discussion needs to happen before they move forward.
I remembered when we were told about the economic impact of the veteran’s cemetery and why it was a good idea to gift the land.
While I think it is appropriate to charge for for-profit events, I’m not sure it is wise to charge non-profit events. As Starr also pointed out, if we need more money for staff and overtime for the officers, they should budget for it instead of tying it into this. I think he said something like the police union got ‘HOSED’ by the city last year in contract negotiations.
Another funny moment was when Erickson asked about how you determine something is a political rally/protest which is considered a 1st Amendment event and the city could not charge for police security. She jokingly said (and she did apologize for the comparison) that what if the Zombie Walk parade said it was actually a political event to bring awareness to pro-life issues 🙂
I guess Bloomberg plans for a formal announcement on Tuesday that he is running for president on the Democratic ticket. I would not recommend voting for him – but that is a whole other discussion.
Either way, there has been a ton of discussion about how he will use his money to win the primary. While I understand the nervousness of the other candidates about that, my bigger fear is how he will use the data he has been collecting on cities.
As you know, Bloomberg launched the American Cities Initiative, and mayor TenHaken and others in his administration have been working closely with the Bloomberg organization as well as many other cities across the country. Bloomberg has been building a network of ‘Data’ that would be invaluable in running for president.
Is it legal to use this data? I’m not sure, and I don’t even know where I would look up something like that, but some things are clear. This is ‘commercial’ data that anyone can use, so that may be the legal ‘loophole’ here.
Bloomberg has been financing this initiative and our city leaders and other city leaders across the nation have justified that it is okay to collect this data on us because Bloomberg is paying for it and it isn’t costing the taxpayers a dime.
Don’t be fooled by this Trojan Horse. Bloomberg and his organization isn’t built of dummies. Having valuable information about our city (that is in a very red state) like transportation, codes, voter addresses, housing, employment, taxation, politics, etc. is invaluable to Bloomberg.
I never assumed that Bloomberg was doing this out of the ‘goodness of his heart’. It is clear to me now that is a bigger part of his run for the presidency.
If he announces on Tuesday, if I were the mayor of Sioux Falls, I would immediately cut ties with the organization and request that any data collected on us be turned over (even if they probably have it backed up somewhere).
It is one thing to learn how to innovate in our city – it’s entirely different thing to help someone run for president. I always knew our association with this organization smelled very fishy, and now I know why.
As you can see, the council meeting is on Monday this week because, I believe four councilors are leaving Tuesday for the National League of Cities City Summit in San Antonio, TX. I think the four attending are Starr, Stehly, Erickson, Neitzert and his hand sanitizer (they give free soap at the hotel).
• October Financials, the city is still riding in at about 6.4% from last year, which is good.
• Mary Jo Wegner Arboretum Management Agreement, which is a year to year agreement
• As I understand the last presentation, the city is going to start charging for events at the Levitt, but there has also been a smaller discussion about charging for police security at various events. One that has been discussed for years is JazzFest, yet the discussion quickly dies once it is pointed out to the PD that that event brings in tax revenue and has an economic impact. I heard from a city mole that the SFPD has been complaining they have to work the event which causes them to take a day off in the middle of the week then have to work a Saturday. Not sure if that complaint is true, and besides, all I have ever seen POs do at JazzFest is hang out in the beer tents and eat. Seems like a pretty good gig. I also want to point out that they are paid to do a job – does it matter what or where they are doing it? Seems like a grievance they can bring up to their Union rep. Also, even if we start charging for police presence at JazzFest and other events – how does it solve the scheduling issue? It doesn’t, which brings it back to just a ‘money’ issue. If you look at slide #11 on the attached PDF on the presentation, you will find some curious ‘numbers’. First off, the officer count is questionable. I think someone did not do the math correctly in that column, because it basically says that there was only two officers at every event. So let’s just review the hours. I found it suspicious that ZombieWalk (a parade that lasted about 20 minutes had 8 logged hours, or Jazzfest, an event at most lasting about 20 hours total had 464 hours logged (that breaks down to about 23 officers working the event at the same time – hardly). Also, if we are going to start ‘charging’ for police presence, we have to be fair and charge for all events. This would include ALL parades, funeral processions, and YES campaign security for a private fundraiser when the president shows up and doesn’t do a public appearance. I think they are going down a rabbit hole that they will never get out of. As a city official said to me when I asked them their opinion, ‘This is what we pay taxes for.’ In other words they were against charging the fees since we are already paying for these services. I would agree (though I still think Noem owes us $20,000). Also, the yearly cost is peanuts, $125K a year. I’m sure the city recoups those costs in tax revenue generated by these events at least Ten-Fold if NOT more. Much to do about nothing. What they really need to do is fix the scheduling of the officers so that covering these special events is done fairly with all of the staff involved.
UPDATE: I’m curious what this means in the ordinance ‘Adds First Amendment Activity to ordinance’. I don’t know, there are NO details about this in the presentation, but my guess it has to do with political rallies or protests, which I find odd. The 1st Amendment is broad and already protects us. A municipality really doesn’t have the power to amend the US Constitution. That part of the proposed ordinance will be an interesting discussion.
UPDATE II: I did some more research on this. I guess this is a pet project of Councilor Kiley who has been pushing this for awhile. I heard that the mayor is kind of on the fence and thinks that the fees should be selective based on the nature of the event. Not sure what we will hear from either one of them. I also know this is something that Barthel pushed for when he was working under the last mayor, and Bowlcut shut it down, because he saw it as a ‘scheduling’ issue, as I do.
I also want to point out that Kansas City used to have a massive Jazz and Blues Festival that ended about 15 years ago because the city said they were going to start charging for police presence. It killed the festival.
If you look at this STUDY from 2015 of the economic impact of these events in our community, you will see the massive returns. It was stated one time by the CVB that JazzFest alone (depending on it’s attendance) brings in about $9-20 million in economic impact. While I understand that this seems like a handout, the economic impact covers the $125K easily. I guess non-profits around town have been very nervous about this for awhile and that if this happens, JF will move to the fair grounds which will essentially KILL the event.
I see what is going on here. They want to charge rental fees for the Levitt, which I totally understand and agree with. With a new facility like that it is wise to get these things in place early and build on them. But the rental of the Levitt has NOTHING to do with police security at these events. (They are separate ordinances, but somehow are coming forward at the same time). What they are basically doing is trying to tie this in with it, to get it passed. It what legislators call ‘hog housing’. It is how the Pavilion* got passed. And with Kiley on the way out in a few months, he wants to get this done before he leaves, similar to the idiotic move by Erpenbach and Rolfing to rig our local elections with council runoffs. My advice to the council is that if they are going to do this, they are going down a very slippery slope that could kill many great public events in our city.
*Notice that Sidewalk Arts Festival and German Fest was NOT included on the chart for police presence.
Item #6, Approval of Contracts, Sub Item #8, HVAC upgrades to Events Center, $255K. Can you imagine as a business owner, that after you made a multi-million dollar building expansion that in 5 short years you were told you needed to spend this kind of coin to upgrade the HVAC system? Now I understand regular maintenance, but this just sounds shady. I have seen this a lot with the EC, we cut corners while building it and now we are making very costly upgrades that should have been included to begin with. What a sham.
I have come to the realization that bitching about this project at this point is almost futile;
After a contentious five-year saga of fits and false starts, we’re left with something that looks more like it belongs in downtown Chernobyl post-meltdown.
Now we’re faced with setting aside our dreams of a silk purse in return for a sow’s ear.
But we find the current state of affairs unacceptable. The “finishing†touches on such a huge and visible public initiative should excite and energize the citizens of Sioux Falls. Instead, we stand disappointed and disillusioned.
TenHaken has an opportunity to begin earning back public trust in City Hall.
While the editorial makes some good points, I sometimes wonder if it is too late. I don’t think that Mayor TenHaken or his administration have ANY intention of becoming more transparent, in fact, they have been in hunker down mode for over a year, and it gets worse by the day. The super secret, hurry up and ramrod through the 5G implementation without (real) public meetings is proof of this. I said to someone the other day, “It makes you wonder all the things they are doing behind the scenes we don’t know about?”
While the previous mayor was very OPEN about his SECRECY – it was almost a badge of honor with him, this mayor pretends like it isn’t going on, but they are one in the same. I saw when Munson did this, when the next guy did it, and now our current mayor, and it is getting worse and more deceptive by the day. God help us, because I’m not sure there is much the rest of can do to stop this.
l3wis 
