SD Municipal League; FOOD TAX: Good – PROPERTY RIGHTS: Be Aware!

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Yvonne Taylor, Executive Director of the South Dakota Municipal League addressed the SF City council at the informational meeting on Monday. She said some interesting things. She was questioned about code enforcement, and she said (paraphrasing);
“You have to be careful about property rights.”
Yeah, NO shit?! Then she switched gears on the food tax, she seemed to support it because it was a ‘consistent’ revenue source and went on to say that the people that ‘can afford it’ don’t have a problem with paying it, and we need to get more help to the less fortunate.
Here’s the deal. Damn right the well-to-do support it! It makes poor people pay taxes while the rich skirt income taxes. It has already been proven that our state would be much better off if we had an income tax for people who made over $30,000 a year and eliminated sales taxes. We could probably even get rid of that disease called Video Lottery.
We know who runs South Dakota. Rich Republicans. I would love to throw tomatoes, if I could afford them.

At least Mayor Mike is being ‘somewhat’ realistic

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No surprise, sales tax revenues are still down in Sioux Falls. If you think we are just going to ‘POP’ out of this recession by simply ‘SAYING’ things are getting better, you are crazy. I actually think things are getting worse and we have not bottomed out yet in Sioux Falls, and it is refreshing to see that our new mayor understands at least one thing that is going on in our city and country;

But, numbers released Thursday show that the sales tax numbers have now dropped one percent compared to last year at this time. Mayor Mike Huether says he was not surprised by the seven point swing, saying the economy hasn’t fully turned around yet.

“I think that those are more realistic. The economy in no way has recovered completely,” Huether said.

And Huether says the new numbers prove that the city needs to keep spending under control and do even more this year to cut the budget.

“We will scrutinize the spending habits of city government even more,” Huether said.

While I agree cuts should be made, we must also have a one year break from special interest spending. I guess I don’t agree with cutting customer service to citizens when we are not cutting special interests. If we want to cut back on the Parks budget, which is beneficial to everyone, then we need to stop giving the Zoo money for monkey hot tubs. Citizen services should come first, and foremost. Trust me, I believe that Mike wants to trim the city budget, but if he cuts services for the sake of indoor pools and hockey rinks, he’ll hear about it, and not just from me. Remember Mike, you can’t have your cake and eat it to. Munson thought that was the case. You have to make a decision; Citizens or Special interests.

Mike Huether lands a zinger

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This was part of a full-page, color ad that the Huether campaign ran today in the Argus Leader;

This ad proves why Brown would be the ideal candidate to run against in a run-off. He has a long voting record of spend, spend, spend. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. If Vernon makes the runoff, I hope his competitor nails him on his spendaholic voting record.

Notice, NO mention of Staggers. Why? Because Staggers (not Huether) was the first candidate to oppose increasing taxes to build an events center.

Stormland TV News continues to be the propaganda wing of city hall, kinda

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Stormland had a couple of stories, and once again, they didn’t ask the other side, big surprise. The first was about sales tax revenues being up in the first couple of months of 2010. Gee, wonder if that has anything to do with people getting their tax returns and buying shit they need . . .

Sales tax collections in Sioux Falls grew by 5.7 percent in the first two months of 2010. The new numbers reflect the first positive growth in six months.

While it’s too early to tell whether this the beginning of something big, Mayor Dave Munson says it is good news.

2010 is off to a good start for the city of Sioux Falls because the first two months of sales receipts show people are spending again.

“It’s encouraging to see that because it was July of ’09 that we saw a positive in the sales tax.  Coming now, it couldn’t be more timely, so we are really pleased to see that there is a growth,” Munson said.

Notice, no mention of tax returns or the $400 tax credit that Obama handed out this tax season. What do people do (especially poor and working class people) when they get their tax return? They freaking blow it. That is why revenue was up.

Or it may have something to do with this;

This February, the city received a $473,000 check from the state from audit investigations – a large amount, Rowenhorst said. It makes up 13 percent of the February revenue, which totaled $3.6 million. The large check is 12 times the amount received in February 2009, when the city received $38,600. If the state audit checks are removed from the monthly revenue totals, February revenue this year actually is down 6 percent from last February. With the state checks, this February is up 7 percent.

Their next story was about potholes. While I was impressed that the pothole machine showed up so quickly, I had a good chuckle at the end of the story. It wasn’t in the print story, but listen to what Katie says at the end of the clip;

“After five hours about half of the repair had been blown out by cars.”

Well, when you don’t even have a person get out of the vehicle to repair the hole, what do you expect? That machine may be better at seasoning steaks instead of filling potholes. I would love to meet the asscrack that sold the city that POS.

If you didn’t see this coming…

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…you must be blind, deaf, and incomprehensibly stupid. Time to find a new source of rainbows and unicorn farts.

The bill that would have allowed cities to raise a third penny sales tax for special projects was shot, hanged, poisoned, racked, gassed, lethally injected, drawn, quartered, and waterboarded by the House Local Government Committee.

While most of the arguments against the bill came from people saying they didn’t want to tax the poor to pay for something they’ll never use (a good argument), the main problem I have with funding a new EC with a sales tax is that it’s a crappy way to fund an entertainment building. Tax Bed, Board, and Booze instead. This will still give us enough revenue to build an EC without putting an undue burdon on people buying groceries or yet another set of clothing for a daughter who grows faster than our national debt.

The most unfortunate (and telling) part of the linked article is the paragraph quoting Jane Page of the State Department of Revenue.  She’d like to keep the option open for the state to raise sales taxes in the future without having to pile on top of increased local taxes.  I wonder how many legislators “can’t wait” to raise the sales tax to build all kinds of wonderful stuff.

Now that the city has to go back to the drawing board to come up with a workable idea, maybe they’ll be a little more open-minded about better locations and funding sources. If not, we’ll still be talking about building a new EC 20 years from now.