Funny tactics? Nope. Cleverly tactical? Yup.

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One of the main reasons I pushed for the ethical decision on Friday was because I wanted the story to be in the news cycle over the weekend, and the media has delivered. Though I knew how the politically appointed Board of Ethics would rule in Litz and Jamison’s favor, I don’t think it was a bad thing. Why? Many citizens still think they have a conflict, and the decision reinforces what the upcoming vote on Monday really means. Which councilors are on the citizens/small business side and which are on big business/developers side? We will find out Monday night.

I don’t doubt that the platting fees will pass, but the retail tax increase will be close and comes down to two people; Vernon Brown and Munson. Vernon still has not said how he will vote on the retail tax increase. If he votes for it, Munson will break the tie.

Kelo TV has a story on it.

Argus Leader also puts their .08 cents in on the issue.

Posted in: Ethics, SF City Council, Taxes ⋅ Tagged: , ,

Why vilify citizens that want to participate in local government?

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From KELO TV;

Bob Litz says, “What this is, what you’re seeing there with a conflict of interest actually is a tactic by a group of people that don’t want me to vote on this thing and they think if they can keep me from voting on it that they’ll get their way so it’s a tactic. Let’s just say that.”

Greg Jamison says, “I think some of the people that might be intrigued about de-railing this whole process understand most likely that it is going to pass and that they are looking for another way to derail this.”

I can understand why councilors Jamison and Litz would be personally upset that a citizen is questioning their intentions as they govern. What I can’t understand is why they would vilify citizens that want to participate in the democratic process just because they disagree with them? Would they prefer citizens just showed up to vote for them on election day and then remain apathetic until the next election day? That’s the impression you get after reading their statements.

I wasn’t trying to get anyone in trouble by asking the ethics committee to issue an opinion on conflict of interest. I was simply asking them to render one before the September 15th vote on raising development platting fees so there is a precedent and not a complaint down the road (no pun intended).

Make no mistake about it, developers have been pulling the puppet strings of city hall for quite some time and the public is finally coming to the realization that developers want your tax money to invest in their projects. This isn’t always a bad thing if the public benefits to. Growth in Sioux Falls is wonderful, but can’t developers find a way to continue doing business without constantly pandering to the city every time they want a new road built?

When I first filed the opinion request and saw my name plastered all over the media, my first reaction was that there would be a backlash. Quite the opposite. I haven’t heard one single negative comment about what I did, most people reacted by saying “It’s about time.” And these are people from all walks of life. Remember, Litz has been down this road a couple of times, and is becoming increasingly untrustworthy. He recently changed his vote on a road closure after he had already promised citizens in his district he would vote in their favor. He also got caught serving on a housing board while also sitting on the city council, in essence voting on policy twice. He seems to have trouble taking responsibility for his actions, and wants to blame citizens for his misjudgment.

That’s why it surprised me that Litz, Jamison and even councilor Brown were blaming the citizens for my recent opinion request. This confuses me. I never asked if they had a conflict of interest when it came to the retail tax increase, just the platting fees, which are widely supported by most of the councilors and most likely will pass even without their votes.

My suggestion to Litz, Jamison and Brown is to back off the citizens and not assume we are trying to derail anything, we are just asking that you be honorable and uphold the law and stop whining to the media about citizens asking you to do your job. Listen to your constituents, instead of the special interests that funded your campaigns.

Posted in: SF City Council, Taxes ⋅ Tagged: , , ,

Developer Fee-Gate, or whatever

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This news article is confusing, because there seems to be some confusion about Litz’s conflict of interest. Or at least he is confused. The conflict of interest (that is being questioned) has to do with canons 3 and 6 of the code of ethics not article 7. Also, I don’t think Litz or any councilor for that matter has a conflict of interest when it comes to the sales tax increase, the question is whether they can vote on developer platting fees.

I will have more on this later today, an interesting twist to Developer Fee-Gate.

Posted in: Uncategorized

Mayor Huether has paid off debt by taxing us to death

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Hizzoner was on the B-N-B show this morning spreading his own special kind of love. He started telling his victory lap story he has been telling over the past month that he will be on to bigger and better things right after taking a break, because as he put it, his daughter wants him to be ‘fun again’. I don’t even want to know what that all entails but I’m picturing a speedo and a couple of empty Coors Light Silos.

Either way, besides serving up his own special brand of BS this morning, now claiming people hate him, or hate progress, or hate something, not sure where he was going with it since he always prefaces these kind of statements with ‘I better be careful about who I am talking about’. He made another one of his Half-Truth statements;

There is NOW less debt than when I became mayor.

Well folks, that is absolutely true. In fact I think when MMM leaves office there will be around $10 million less debt then when he rolled in in 2010. So you ask, how is this so? First off, the obvious; many of the debts that were incurred during the Hanson and Munson administrations have come to fruition. This has nothing to do with Huether, just the way the repayment was set up. In fact, if we wouldn’t have borrowed ANY money during the Huether administration our debt now would probably be around $100 million instead of 3x that.

So you ask, what about all the debt MMM incurred? That still exists, and will for about 20-30 years.

But this is where Huether gets even more dim on his great debt payoff. Many of the infrastructure debts were re-financed and paid down due to the increase of fees in the enterprise funds, front end property tax assessments, property taxes, building and platting, and the list goes on. In fact the Mayor’s office with the help of the rubberstamp council has increased fees and taxes over 50 times since 2010.

So while the mayor may brag about not increasing the debt on the city over the past 8 years, he has certainly put that burden on property owners in Sioux Falls in higher fees and taxes. Don’t believe me? If you still live in the same home you lived in 2010, pull your property taxes from that year and compare them to 2017. Tell me what you figure out?

It’s too bad wages haven’t increased by that much in 8 years?

He also finally admitted that you essentially can’t get things done in government unless you make the decisions behind closed doors with a minority of support from the council and key business players in town. He said that open meetings and forums with the public just drag out the conversation and nothing gets accomplished. While his statements might piss you off, I was happy to finally hear him say publicly that he never gave a rat’s ass what the public thought.

Full steam ahead.

I hope when the mayor decides to be fun again, it will be on another continent.

Posted in: Greg Belfrage, Mayor Almost Done, Mayor Grump Toad, Mayor High Crimes, Mayor Hubris, Mayor Pants on Fire, Mayor Subprime Mike Huether, Mike Huether, Sioux Falls

A busy council agenda for Tuesday Night

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The council may want to consider one of these for the meeting

Forget about the upcoming municipal election for a brief moment, because the current city council has their work cut out for them Tuesday night. Hopefully they stock up on their Depends and shots of insulin, because it is going to be a long night.

In item #1, in the consent agenda, the council will be asked to appropriate $22K for Events Center Cooler Storage Addition Agreement for engineering services to Koch Hazard (this is only the expenditure for design, not construction). The building is only a year old, and we are already adding ‘little things’ to the facility that should have been in place. Makes you wonder how many other ‘little things’ were skipped to make it under budget? (cough, cough, shoddy siding, cough, cough). Expect this to be just one item of several over the next couple of years. Good thing we got that million dollar settlement for popcorn poppers, maybe they could install a few in the lobby of Carnegie Town Hall?

Now let’s skip all the way down to Item #60 (man, that’s a lot of beer licenses) Must have something to do with this past PBR weekend 🙂

Item #60 deals with FREE youth ridership on city buses. I don’t expect much of a debate and this passing with flying colors, though there may be some opposition from administration.

Item #61 deals with the proposed city administration building, I expect this to fail at least 5-3. It is obvious that this project requires more scrutiny by the next council.

Item #63 deals with the boulevard ordinance. I don’t expect much pushback from the council or public on this one, but you never know, those Kentucky Bluegrass defenders have been known to show up without warning.

Items #71-72, Platting fee increases. Not sure what kind of debate will occur, but expect some from the development community to rear their heads. This goes back to the ridiculous increase in the second penny from .92 to a full penny and the empty, empty, very empty promises of the development peeps to pay their fare share of arterial road development. Not sure if all the fees will pass as is or will need amending, but it is WAY overdue.

Item #75, appropriating left over monies to streets.

Item #76, 1st reading, deals with appropriating grants for affordable housing

Item #77, 1st reading, deals with cleaning up typos from our crack legal team

And that’s not all, it doesn’t end until item #85, in which the mayor will ask for adjournment then tell us how hard our city council and employees work because they had to sit through another long meeting (while collecting a paycheck).

You all come back now, Yah hear?

Posted in: SF City Council, Sioux Falls