Public Indoor Pool continues to languish

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As you can see, the indoor pool that we ‘NEEDED’ doesn’t seem to know how to grow it’s numbers.

Just look at two numbers below. The yearly passes are only at a little over 400 for a town of 180K. What is even more revealing is that only ONE person seemed to be interested in a winter pass.

You will also see the deficit. At this trajectory, the indoor pool will see it’s greatest loss for the year since it has opened, around $600K.

Let’s face it, we didn’t need an indoor public pool. We have plenty of private facilities offering this. On top of that, the poor children of our community still can’t use the facility unless they have a benefactor, because FREE passes we give for the outdoor pools don’t apply to the indoor pool.

So we stole money from a Federal Levee repayment to build an indoor public pool on Federal Land (that we don’t own) so the swim teams (and not the poor kids) could have a place to go where the taxpayers would subsidize them at a tune of over $500K a year. Another failure of the past administration. They are piling up these days.

Posted in: MIDCO Aquatic Center, Sioux Falls, Sioux Falls Parks and Rec

How will the Sioux Falls School District pay for staffing of the new schools?

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And I’m not just talking about teachers. You also have support staff, administrators, janitors, resource officers, etc. There is also utilities and maintenance.

This question came up during the campaign for the bond election. The administration blew it off and pretty much said they will figure it out later and the state gives money for each student. This of course doesn’t solve the problem.

So where will the money come from? My guess is that the SFSD will ask for ANOTHER opt out to fund the operations and staff. They really have NO CHOICE. We saw it with the shortfall this year.

So why wasn’t this clarified during the bond election campaign? I think I answered that question. They didn’t want to scare the taxpayers anymore. What most people don’t realize is that the $300 million dollar debt is only for brick and mortar. Not only is it ONLY for that, it is ONLY for the finished product. Moving forward we are responsible to maintain it out of NEW funds.

The SFSD is fleecing it’s residents. As brought up in the current school board debate our levees may be lower than surrounding communities, but our property values are extremely inflated, especially in Lincoln County.

It will be interesting to see how these new schools will be funded, because it won’t be from hopes and prayers.

Posted in: Elections, SF School District

West River math VS. East River math

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So this is an interesting story;

RCSD – $250m – $20/month increase in property taxes on every $100,000 of value  =  $240 yr
Morrison/Vik/Maher MATH:
SFSD – $190m – $2/month increase in property taxes on $100,000  =  $24 yr
So which finance director is telling the truth?
I do know that the SFSD rearranged their capital outlay levees, but the disparity is strange. I also wonder if they plan to pay off the bonds a lot faster in RC?
Posted in: Property Taxes, Rapid City, SF School District, Sioux Falls, Taxes

Did we dodge a bullet with the Flood?

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The good news is that we have a remarkable levee system that has been built up for the last 50 years or so. We also had very good disaster planning from department heads (I think we learned a lesson from the ice storm). We also had a good response from the state and we will probably get quite a bit of reimbursement from FEMA (or the city will).

So what’s the lesson here? We learned that city prepared this 2nd round very well, which is great. It’s unfortunate they could not have done more about the first round.

But let’s make it clear, moving forward with climate change, we can probably expect more events like this in the future. We are certainly NOT out of the clear.

As for the potholes, it may be too late this year, but moving forward we need to build our roads better. I’m not sure if there needs to be engineering or material changes (probably both) but when you look at what other cities do like Minneapolis, we can build our roads better, it is possible, but it will cost more. That’s reality. This is why the city needs to get back to using the 2nd penny for it’s intended purpose, building infrastructure. The days of building extravagant play palaces need to end and we need to put that money into our roads. We can’t continue to squander that money like we have the past 17 years on entertaining the rich. We also need to end corporate welfare in the form of TIFs and tax reduction schemes. Our development community does just fine without tax breaks, they need to start contributing their fare share towards property taxes.

Posted in: Sioux Falls

My Apologies

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I have been thinking about this ever since the flood concerns reared their head this past couple of weeks. I want to apologize to city councilors who had the foresight to fund the Levees by borrowing the money in hopes to get repayment from the Feds. I especially want to apologize to Jamison and Litz who I was the hardest on. Not only are the levees proving to be a good idea, the Feds have repaid us for the bonds we took out (even though Bowlcut & Bucktooth decided to squander the money for an indoor pool, we now have to pay the bonds back from 2nd penny).

One of my complaints at the time was this was really about saving all the businesses in the FEMA flooplain in the mall area from paying flood insurance. Now that I look back on it, I can’t imagine what kind of mess we would have now if they didn’t build the levees.

So once again, sorry.

Posted in: SF City Council, Sioux Falls