We can’t cut taxes because we won’t be able to help the homeless?!

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Now Councilor Knudson is claiming if we drop the 2nd penny tax back down to 1.9 we won’t be able to help the homeless.

(Click on Council/County Joint meeting, November 17 – Starts at 44:00 MIN)

You can also watch Munson do the Mexican hat dance with Commissioner Hajek about funding (50:00 MIN). Which is ironic, considering the county isn’t offering any figures.

First off, De, you told us we had to raise this tax to build NEW ROADS! That’s it! Not for homeless shelters, so cut the crap. As for the homeless shelter, I am 100% for it. I agree with Hajek, that this is an investment in safety and savings to the taxpayers in chronic homeless costs. The longer we dick around with finding a location and funding, the more taxpayers are losing. In fact Councilor Anderson and had a great discussion about it. I told him, and he agreed the best place for it would be next to the Law Enforcement center. Budget the money, stop the pissing matches with the county commission, lock yourselves in a room and negotiate a funding and location solution.

As for where the money should come from? Cut the parks budget to make it happen.

See how simple these things are when you use common sense.

Common Sense Government for once! Get out!

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I see legislators are finally listening to Detroit for once.

They have come up with some good ideas to help fund road maintenance in our state;

  • That the excise tax charged on registration of vehicles be raised from 3 percent of the purchase price to 4 percent. That would raise about $19 million dollars, which would go to the state highway fund.
  • Raising the cost of license-plate fees for noncommercial vehicles by an average of $10. For a typical passenger car or pickup, that would bump the fee from about $42 to $52 and would raise about $12 million, which would go to counties.
  • Eliminating a provision that gives a 30 percent license-plate fee reduction for noncommercial vehicles older than five years and a 10 percent break for older commercial vehicles. Those two changes would raise about $13 million, which would go to counties for road work.

    • Cutting $5 Million from a $412 Million dollar budget would have been a snap.

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    But Councilor Litz doesn’t think so.

    Listen to the discussion between Staggers and Litz on the Sales Tax decrease initiative. Litz also believes government knows how to spend your money better then you do. He says to keep the town growing.

    I think he has been locked up in Munson’s bullet proof closet for too long.

    Inside Town Hall – November 10, 2008

    Council Members Kermit Staggers and Bob Litz: Citizen Initiative Reducing the Sales Tax and Shape Sioux Falls. Council Members Litz and Staggers discuss the 2nd penny sales tax and other topics.

    A Sales Tax DECREASE will actually help local growth

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    Do you think city hall knows how to spend your hard earned money better then you? When the mayor and half of the council raised your sales tax, that’s exactly what they told you. They believe in the ‘trickle down economics’ model of taxation; increase taxes and give that additional revenue to special interests such as developers and contractors in hopes that money will ‘trickle back’ down to those original taxpayers in the form of jobs and growth.

    It’s a backwards way of spending YOUR money to improve this community. There is a better way to move us forward; let taxpayers spend that money individually instead of handing it over to city bureaucrats and special interests.

    They disguised this regressive tax increase as being progressive because they claim it will help our city grow. Hogwash.

     I’m all for new and maintained roads – I’m just against how they want to pay for them. New roads can be paid for through developer fees, which I fully support and roads can be maintained through the sales tax we already pay. Councilor Costello put it best in an Argus Leader article “It’s a shell game.” There is nothing stopping our mayor and the city council from spending those increased taxes on anything they want to. They sold it to us by saying we needed the new roads yet the CIP budget (which is also funded with sales tax) is packed full of unneeded projects that only benefit a few in our community not the greater good. We can cut the CIP easily and make up for this sales tax decrease. It will mandate the mayor and city council to spend within their means for at least one year (2010) and you also have to remember we may have up to four new councilors and a new mayor in 2010, lets break them in right by showing them they need to have some fiscal restraint.

    Want REAL growth in our community? Stop overtaxing our citizens on necessities like food and utilities and let them spend that money on goods and services that helps ALL local businesses grow not just a select few lucky enough to get a handout from the city.

    Local business drives our economy in the form of good jobs which promotes growth. Would Sioux Falls grow stronger if ALL local business were getting a piece of the pie and not just the special interests?

    Scott L. Ehrisman

    Co-Chair, Citizens for a Responsible Sales Tax

    Theresa Stehly and I will be on the local radio talk show hosted by Jon Micheals, FORUM on all the Backyard Broadcasting stations Sunday Morning talking about the petition drive for the initiative to reduce sales taxes.

    KELO AM and FM at 7 AM and all the other stations at 8 AM. I believe the interview lasted about 40 minutes.

    Argus columnist KINDA endorses a sales tax decrease?

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    Matt Okerlund wrote a great column on Sunday about term limits, but he started his column off with I believe to be a veiled endorsement of our goal to get sales tax decreased;

    Earlier this month when told a group of residents launched a petition drive to counter his and the City Council’s decision to increase the city sales tax from 1.92 percent to 2 percent on Jan. 1 to raise more money for road construction, Sioux Falls Mayor Dave Munson sounded dumbfounded.

    “I’m trying to build a city, and build a city for the future, so that our kids and grandchildren don’t have to go to Minneapolis or Omaha or Kansas City for opportunities. They can stay here,” huffed Munson at the news that Citizens for a Responsible Sales Tax hoped to gather enough signatures to ask voters to cut the city sales tax to 1.9 percent - the pending .08 percent increase plus a bit more – because it is convinced a looming U.S. recession and banks from Iceland to Islamabad making like the Hindenburg is a strange time for city government to be hitting up taxpayers for more money.

    “What do they want to take away?” grumbled Munson. He noted the city budget next year includes $615,800 for upgrades to McKennan Park. “Do we want to just drop those programs we want to do for McKennan Park? It’s a possibility.”

    If that was a veiled threat, it lacked the veil.

    He finishes the column up beautifully

    In nine days the other people who inhabit this state will once again tell me just how wrong I am. When that happens, I’ll mutter. I’ll curse. I’ll look to the heavens and shake my head. I might even wonder – if for only a fleeting moment – if somehow, by some fluke of nature, by some crazy twist of fate, I have it backward.

    Maybe the misguided one isn’t them.

    Maybe it’s me.

    And maybe someone should remind the mayor of this city and four-fifths of the Legislature how a democracy works. It seems they have forgotten.

    I have long felt that half of our city council and mayor have no clue how a democracy works. The proof is in the pudding. They have been wrong about the Rec Center and Drake Springs Pool, and once again he is wrong about raising taxes on food and utilities to build roads for new development (that may never happen) during a National economic crisis.

    Please sign our petition.