Golf Opportunity? Don't Waste My Time If It Isn't About the Event Center.

Willow Run Golf Course is up for auction and there is a unique opportunity for the city to add an excellent, already developed golf course to the other city owned golf courses strategically placed throughout the city.  Willow Run's general manager says the golf course is "in good shape and is operating profitably."

Here is a golf course with a 25 year history in the community. It is a beautiful established golf course. The City of Sioux Falls has staked a strong committed claim in this recreation sport which has resulted in some pretty wonderful golf courses for the public duffers. A quality of life opportunity for the community that won't see the light of day with the mayor.

It appears that the mayor is not interested in even entertaining the idea of such an investment for the city. I am told he has already rejected a direct offer to sell from Dr. Tschetter. He has also rejected an appeal from some Park Board members a couple weeks ago. Rumor has it the mayor said the Park Board members were wasting his time.

The Eastside of Sioux Falls is growing economically with significant infrastructure being built by the city and private developers. Commercial development along East 10th Street continues and the partial completion of Powder House Road is a nice improvement. The establishment of Harmodon Park and Dawley Farms will ultimately drive more commercial development. Housing starts along Highway 11 continue to grow.  Willow Run is directly adjacent to the new Arboretum, and near Arrowhead Park.

At the very least, it deserved a thoughtful discussion with the Park Board and the City Council as to its potential use in the community as a public golf course and the revenue possibilities for city coffers.  It's not like there isn't the ability to use some of that $3.8 million undesignated fund in the capital improvement program for such an investment in the city.

Is thoughtful dialogue on investment opportunities for the city as a whole a bad idea? Investment opportunties come to the city all the time and it behooves elected officials to consider all possibilities before dismissing something outright without forethought or planning. This is too valuable an opportunity to just dismiss with a flick of the wrist and a comment that the mayor's time is being wasted.

The Dean Karsky Event Center?

At the Information Meeting on Monday, May 16th, there was discussion among council members on when to bring their event center location decision before the full council for an official vote. Council Chair Greg Jamison stated he would like that action to occur by the first or second council meeting in June.

There are a lot of rumors out there on which way this vote is going to go and who is going to end up being the swing vote. Observers are saying that there is no question that councilors Anderson, Entenman and Rolfing will vote for the Arena/Convention Center location. They have been pretty vocal about their support for the mayor's plan from the very beginning and no amount of information that has been forthcoming has swayed them in the least.

Councilors Jamison, Erpenbach, Aquilar and Brown have listened to presentations, asked questions and considered both locations and it appears they are leaning heavily towards the Cherapa site as a final consideration.

Guess who appears to be the swing vote? The new guy on the block appointed by the city council to fill the vacant seat left by Bob Litz. Councilor Karsky has been heard saying he favors the Cherapa site. He has said it before his appointment to the city council. He has said it in meetings with the BID group. Now he saying that he supports the Cherapa site but might have to vote for the Arena/Convention Center site. Either he has no conviction or he's getting real pressure from the likes of the mayor and Councilor Entenman.

How ironic is it going to be to have the newest council member who was not even elected to the position be the deciding vote on the event center location. I think if he forces this to a 4-4 vote requiring the mayor to break the tie, we should name it the Dean Karsky Event Center.

What a legacy to have tied to your name.

Mile 17

The mayor gave his public monthly event center update (44.05) to the City Council on Monday, May 16th. He has equated the event center journey to a marathon. He equates his personal struggle at mile 17 of his marathon to his mayoral marathon called the event center.

I expected to hear more than the usual platitudes and pep rally we got from his introduction. The only meat at this update was from the public works director who is proceeding with the arena site as the chosen site as if it is a done deal. Even though the city council has yet to decide on a location choice, the administration is moving forward with developing the schematic design and linking it to the convention center. They are continuing the site development work at the arena site relating to access roads, utilities, and parking alternatives. They will develop the initial construction model for the construction manager at risk. 

We heard the mayor say he needs the city council's help to get this thing done. He said he needs the help of Sioux Falls. He is going to ask the city business leaders for help and he listed various organizations that he is going to reach out for help. I submit to you that maybe he should have reached out to the city council and the business organizations before he began his marathon instead of reaching out at mile 17 of his journey.

He listed a number of downtown visions/goals and said these goals should be done downtown in conjunction with the building of the event center. He outlined the following goals for downtown:

• Strong commercial development
• Remove railroad switching yard
• Tear down the river ramp
• New hotels with convention center facilities, bars, restaurants
• River Greenway to the South
• Uptown at the Falls
• Repair/rebuild/replace roads and water lines
• New investment incentives from Community Development
• Trolley bus transportation from the Arena/Convention Center
• Reap rewards of a new Event Center

I don't know about you but these goals look like the goals associated with the building of an event center at Cherapa.  It's not about downtown reaping rewards separately from the Event Center. It's about what is good for all of Sioux Falls, not just downtown. His motives for listing these visions/goals for downtown is so transparent it is almost laughable. He wouldn't have to go to this length to placate the business community and/or the BID group advocating for the Cherapa site if the Arena/Convention Center site made any economic sense at all.

The mayor said, "My goal is to bring forth as much information as I can to the city council so they can make a prudent and responsible decision." Yet, he continues to march forward with his Arena site plan. I wonder how the City Council feels about that double talk. When he talks about getting the city council's help, what he really wants is for them to get on their running shoes and run the rest of the marathon with him to the Arena Convention Center site.

He is already at mile 17 and he is now asking for their help? Asking for their help and the help of the business community should have been a preliminary heat before the actual race got started. This whole thing is so backwards.  No wonder everyone is so darn crabby and heated up. I believe a city this size should have an event center. I just wish our leader knew how to run a race from beginning to end instead of trying to figure it out at mile 17.

Dakota Delight

I opened up the May/June 2011 issue of Midwest Magazine and saw an article titled "Dakota Delight."  It was a write-up about Sioux Falls. The article says it only takes a day in Sioux Falls to see that South Dakota's biggest city is also its hippest.

For those of us who live in Sioux Falls, we know what wonderful things this city has to offer. The article says it best. The article calls Falls Park a spectacular urban park to showcase those namesake falls. When my relatives and friends come from Virginia, where do I take them? We go to Falls Park and take the elevator up the visitor tower so we can see the full beauty of the falls from up high. We visit Overlook Cafe and sit outside and eat ice cream. We take photos of ourselves with the falls as a backdrop.

We ride the trolley through downtown and stop to stroll along Phillips Ave. and view the sculptures. We have taken pictures of ourselves next to and sometimes right on the sculpture. I had a marvelous time showing them the heart of the city. My visitors remark on what a wonderful city this is and how quaint and unique the downtown area is and what a wonderful park Falls Park is. 

I have even taken my family visitors on a driving tour around Sioux Falls starting at the Falls going North to Arrowhead Park, down Highway 11 past Harmadon Park, traveling through the central part of the city showcasing McKennan Park area and the beautiful older homes, to both hospital campuses.  A drive through downtown and past the Orpheum Theater and the Washington Pavilion. Moving west along 57th Street and then traveling north to Southeast Technical Institute campus and University Center.  Back through the city past the Great Plains Zoo and down 41st Street and the commercial corridor.  I took my Virginia Beach friends to see the U.S.S. South Dakota Battleship Memorial and they got a kick out of the fact that this was a replica and not the real thing like they are used to seeing steaming out of Chesapeake Bay. You don't realize how wonderful Sioux Falls really is until you drive through and around the city and see it through the eyes of your visitors.

This article in Midwest Magazine reminded me how pleased my visitors were to be shown our city and what it has to offer and how surprised they were at what a wonderful city Sioux Falls is. My friends talk about how blue the sky is and how black the dirt is and how fresh and clear the air is - no smog. They love to come here and they live near the ocean. Go figure.

Too often we think we are just some little Midwestern town that is boring with nothing to offer.  This article in Midwest Magazine talks about SculptureWalk that converts Sioux Falls' historic district into an outdoor gallery. It talks about Phillips Ave. filling with pedestrians in the summer to view the sculptures and visit shops, galleries and restaurants on Phillips and Main and 8th Street Railroad.

If you take a minute to read this article, you will understand why the Phillips to the Falls and the downtown area is called the heart of the city. Then I suggest if you never go there, to get in your car this summer and visit Falls Park and take the trolley through downtown and get out and walk and explore the heart of your city. You may find that downtown has more to offer than you think. I wish more locals could view our city through the eyes of our visitors.

Blogger Site Down for Maintenance

Dear Blog Readers and those of you who comment on my blog:

Please read the message from Blogger (Host of Blogspot.com)  below which explains what has happened to this site starting on May 11th:

We are very sorry that users are unable to publish to Blogger right now. We have rolled back the maintenance release from last night and as a result, posts and comments from all users made after 7:37 am PDT on May 11, 2011 have been removed. Again, we apologize that this happened and our engineers are working hard to return Blogger to normal and restore your posts and comments. We will post a report once this work is complete.

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The Perils of Using the General Fund for an Event Center

The General Fund is the primary operating fund for the city which pays for most of the day to day services for the city. When city general fund departments don't expend all the money in their yearly budget, the unspent monies remain in the general reserve fund. 

The general fund is supplied money primarily through the first penny sales tax and property taxes. If the revenues (first penny sales tax and property tax) exceed the expenditure (the general fund departments' expenses) then there is a surplus, hence the growth in the fund, usually referred to as the unobligated balance.

As the primary operating fund, the general fund is comprised of budget expenditures (appropriated by the city council) of all general departments not supported by user fees. No funds may be expended without the council appropriation approved by city ordinance.   In the 2011 Budget, 85% of the expenditures were personnel costs, 9% of the expenses were for other operating costs, 6% were for capital expenses.

Personnel costs encompass wages and benefits for the mayor, city council, appointive officials,  full time and part time civil service employees and temporary and seasonal employees, workers compensation costs, health insurance costs, liability insurance costs. Other operating costs encompass operating and administration costs for departments, i.e., new and replacement computer hardware/software, gas and utilities, supplies and materials, education, travel and training, telephone costs, consultants and contracts, to name a few.

There are many ways the Administration can save money thereby building up the general fund unobligated balance in order to use as a funding source for the Event Center. Here are some things to watch for during the year to indicate the mayor is building his cookie jar.

• Set the annual budget at zero percent growth. What this means is departments will have to eat any inflationary costs in non-discretionary spending which will impact their ability to fund program services expenses.
• Put a hiring freeze on any new and/or separated employees.You also won't be able to afford to staff a new westside library or a new fire station since all those costs must come out of the general fund.
•  Limit the hiring of temporary or seasonal employees. In Parks and Recreation, this would limit recreation program services offered in the summer.  Summer maintenance and repair programs and winter storm removal will be impacted in Street Maintenance.
• Slow down purchases of  new computers, new or updated software requests, etc. This could mean a negative impact on services to the public. 
• With supplies experiencing high inflationary trends, this will limit the resources available for their purchase.

The mayor could ask the city council to pass an ordinance to use the city's primary operating fund  for the construction of the event center. If the city council allows the utilization of unappropriated funds (reserve or surplus, whatever you want to call it)  it will leave minimal funding for emergencies and for cash flow.

Bringing an ordinance forth to allow general fund dollars for construction costs is unprecedented.

There are funds identified in city government for construction and infrastructure needs: the second penny sales tax, the entertainment tax, and bonding. I hope cautious heads prevail at the city council level if they adopt such a drastic change in fiscal management of taxpayer dollars. What a city council does today to finance an event center could have serious ramifications to the operation of city government as we have known it.

It's Not About Me, It's All About You

I thought nothing could surprise me anymore. Then I watched the "Press Conference" statement by Councilor Entenman at the City Council Information Meeting today.

Having an ethics complaint filed against you as an elected official is serious business. You could tell that Councilor Entenman took the complaint personally. It is easy to understand the emotions he expressed regarding what he feels is an attack on his family's integrity.

However, I believe it is important to remember that his role as city councilor is much different than his role as a private business owner. This complaint was not against his business or how he and his family have run his business. This complaint centers on his second job, the job of an elected official as a member of the Sioux Falls City Council. These are two separate and very distinct jobs.

The job as city councilor requires a much higher standard of conduct than that of a private business owner. City ordinance spells out conflicts of interest and a code of ethics for elected officials and provides an avenue for citizens to express their concerns. The conflict of interest ordinance addresses both direct and indirect conflicts of interest.  It is up to the independent Ethics Board to sort it out.

The conspiracy theories thrown out against Steve Hildebrand, President of Build It Downtown is just foolish on Councilor Entenman's part. Councilor Entenman himself started this conflict of interest  issue when he stood up in public before the Public Services Committee of the City Council and while brushing Councilor Jamison off, stated he didn't care if he had a conflict of interest or not regarding his liquor license application. The fact that he owns property a block away from a parking lot proposed for the Event Center is surely open for conflict of interest consideration by the Ethics Board.

Councilor Entenman has chosen to publicly attack a private citizen who happens to be involved in a grass roots campaign to challenge the mayor's vision for a major project that will impact this community for decades to come. He has basically done to Hildebrand what he accuses Hildebrand of doing to him. It is certainly way over the top to accuse Hildebrand of attacking the integrity of his brothers, wife, children and deceased parents. This is not about his family. This complaint was filed based on his role as a city councilor, not his role as a private business owner.

It is any private citizen's right to file a complaint with the Ethics Board under city ordinance.

To use one's position as an elected official on the City Council to vilify the complainant is outrageous and shows political naivete.