Sioux Falls City Hall wants highest bidder to get new liquor licenses

Mayor Paul TenHaken's finance office unveils plan to scrap random selection process for $240,000 on-sale booze permits

The city of Sioux Falls is ditching the lottery process it’s used in recent years to distribute new liquor licenses and instead will give them to the highest bidders.

That’s if the City Council gets on board with the latest push coming from Mayor Paul TenHaken’s administration, which wants to use sealed bids to pick recipients of the booze licenses that right now go for $240,000.

And while the cost of new licenses that come available as the city’s population grows is significant, it’s less than existing licenses sometimes sell for on the secondary market. Sioux Falls Finance Director Shawn Pritchett told The Dakota Scout Friday those high-dollar transactions — sometimes as much as a half million or more — means the city might not be capturing the true value of newly-issues licenses.

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