County Commission - Regular Meeting

30. We'll call the Brookings County Commission meeting uh for Tuesday, March 3rd, 2026 to order. Uh if all would please stand for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

All right. Item three on the agenda is approval of the agenda. Do I have a motion to approve? So move. Second. Motion and a second. Do I have any comments or additions or corrections?

Um I'd like to make a um motion to amend the agenda to include uh public comment after the presentation of item number eight. All right. Add an item B, public comment to the scheduled agenda item at 9 a.m. Uh, do I have any comments, corrections, or additions? Hearing none, uh, look for u, uh, need a second to do we need a second on the motion by

amendment? Yep. So look for a second on there. Do we have one? We have a second. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Oppose. Say nay. Motion carried. And now you need to vote on the main motion. You bet. And now uh the number three motion to approve the agenda as amended. Uh all in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Oppos say N. Motion carries. Number four, recognition of employee anniversaries. Commissioner Miller.

All right. Uh Ben, good morning.

Morning. We have a certificate of appreciation presented to Ben Wrench on this 3rd day of March 2026 by the Brooking County Commission in recognition of five years of dedicated exceptional service in the Brookings Highway Department. Thank you very much. We got to do that. All right. Number five on the agenda is an invitation for a citizen to schedule time on the commission agenda for an item not listed. There is a 5-minute time limit per person. Anyone wanting to speak during this agenda item must sign in prior to the start of the meeting. No commission action will be taken during this agenda item. Any requested action may be scheduled for future meeting date. Now, of course, we added the amendment to talk about our 9:00. Is there anybody here that would like to visit now about an item not listed on the agenda?

Please come forward.

Good morning. I'm Scott Christopherson. Uh I live in Valga, South Dakota. Um been a resident here for well 20ome years. Um originally from Duel County. Um my family still owns land in Duel County and uh we're seeing lots of hyperscale development projects being um moved to that area or trying to move to that area. Uh, I guess today I'm just kind of sitting here as a concerned citizen. Um, wanting to convey some concerns to the county commission and um maybe get some information back eventually here on some some items that I'm just going to briefly speak on. Um, mainly protections for Brookings and Brookings County towns and hypers from hypers scale industries. Um uh we have qu a lot of a lot of folks in the county have questions and things to consider. Um and you know as far as where things sit with the county commission and in county in general. Um there's a few here that I've got listed. Uh setbacks being number one. I don't know, you know, I I don't you guys might have us all hammered out. Um but you may not either. Uh setbacks. Uh what are what are or has Burkings County established for wind towers, solar panel terminals for farms, um power line projects, power plants, uh electrical substations, and large 15,000 plus animal units um from towns, rural residents, and our water supplies. Um just a question there. Um, county road infrastructure, the rules in place or hypers scale industries for county road improvements or replacement. Are there any policies that would ch change under

new construction? Uh, snow removal um and everything else there. Soil and water. Are there county restrictions on soil type or water contamination in any event of a spill or release? Um, is there a county involved in protection of soil and water contamination? Uh is there any county monitoring of groundwater wellheads or hydrarology in Brookings County? Um especially city and rural wells. Um uh zoning, are there changes to current zoning andor if laws are need to be addressed for hypers scale industries? Water consumption. Are there protections from the county on groundwater consumption? Um, some towns have water restrictions uh during the summertime right now because wells can become taxed during the summertime. Um, is there any short-term um plans for adding EMS or sheriff's department and patrols for increased strain when construction occurs with Hypers Scale Industries? Dual County Sheriff has made mention of pretty good strain on their county when the um power plant was built there. Um as our short-term or long-term dwelling ordinances for industries that want to house more than a certain number of non-related people at their property. Um these are just seven quick items that I um have concerns about. and protecting us as a community. Um, and this stuff is coming in projects are exceedingly coming in at a rapid pace and I just as a concerned citizen just wanted to come present some of this information and

maybe get some information back and I can present um my contact information maybe stuff at Stacy here. So, thank you. Thank you.

Is there anybody else uh for an item not listed on the agenda or is everybody else for the you weren't able to be s here before sign in? I was not. Okay. All right. So, um anybody else? Seeing none, moving on to number six, consent agenda items. Uh we have the minutes, travel and education requests, personal action notices, cellular authorizations, and human services report. Do I have a motion to approve? So moved. Second. Motion and a second. Do I have any comments? Hearing none. Call the role, please. Vanderwall. Hi. Post. Hi.

Miller. Hi. Jensen. Hi. Hustler. Hi. Motion carries. Number seven, routine uh approval of the claims. Do I have a motion to approve? So moved. Second. Motion is second. Do I have any comments? Hearing none. Call the role, please. Post. Hi. Miller. Hi. Jensen. Hi. Vanderwal. Hi. Hustler. Hi. Motion carries. All right. Letter B. Department head reports. We'll start with highway. Good morning. Morning. Morning, Brian.

Uh this afternoon we have bid openings right next door in the community room for our 2026 Brookings County Chip Seal project and our 2026 Brookings County surfacing project be at 2:30. again mentioned right next door in the community room. Uh also going to be bid later in March here was our co-op with uh 16 other counties for our striping project. Uh that bid opening will be held Wednesday, March 11th, 2026 at 11:15 at the Minha County Auditor's Office. And uh kind of wrapping up my report here. Last week, the crew uh attended uh our annual inshaw training here in Brookings and the last little bit of winter hopefully breathed its last breath last weekend, but we did get quite significantly more snow than what we were predicted. Um but overall, uh I think with uh the temps we've got, everything's pretty much gone. I know some of our gravel roads uh we did get questions on why we didn't plow those, but uh in an effort to try to preserve the gravel that we have on the road, we we uh did not do some of those. And now the mother nature's remedied that by melting the snow, but we did do some, but not all.

Any questions? Any questions for Brian? I have one question, Brian, as I've gone through claims. Yep. Be a uh bill here for crack machine repair for $26,000.

Right. That machine is a 2017 Dave. So, we've had it for just about 10 years. And a major component is that is the pump. And the pump uh was replaced. And in order to do that, uh, you got to go inside the machine. So, we did have a service, uh, Craftco service, uh, dealer do that work. And it's quite an intense project or process, you know, and prior to doing that, you know, I I said, is it worth doing that to this machine? Well, you'd be looking at close to double the cost of what that would the repairs cost compared to a new machine. Um, we did replace the wand and that and apparently parts are not cheap for that.

Wow. That's expensive repair. It's it's a machine that we use yearly uh during the winter and it's it's had a lot of material put through it and over time those pumps deteriorate. um and and we did have uh some training included in that because we do have a new crew. So the the servicing dealer came down and and gave us, you know, tips and tricks to try to preserve what we put into that machine to in order to increase its longevity. We're going to get another 10 years out of that machine with that repair. That's the intention. Yes.

Yeah. Hopefully. Okay. Thank you for that. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Sheriff.

Morning. Morning, Sheriff. Morning.

Quick overview with the detention center. We have uh 53 inmates at the present time. 22 of them are Brookings County inmates and the rest are from other counties. I do have um 23 US Marshall Service inmates and it's been staying pretty steady around that 23. Um also uh on the 247 program those numbers are coming down. I have 79 participants which that's a good sign is that uh when we have less people on there we have less people that are uh going to court and having a alcohol type violation or bond or whatever. So that's that's a good number. There's still 37 that come in twice a day for PBT. I have six on remote breath test. Uh have five on scram, which is the ankle bracelet. I have 12 on UAS that come in twice a week. And uh we have six on drug court UAS um and 13 on DUI court UAS. So we still have some issues there, but those numbers are coming down, which is which is good for this time. Otherwise, we the the snow event uh didn't create a lot of issues for my office. I always said that it's when we're going to have snow, let's have it on a weekend because it's just less nobody's in a big hurry going places. We the variable speed come down uh a couple times and then as the road as the interstate got better, it went back up. So, that seems to be working. Uh and uh the way my guy my deputies are talked that uh traffic was slowing down when that speed when those speed limits come on. So anyway, that was that was good. The other thing I I I attended probably my last town and township meeting last week and it was a good crowd. Uh we ate good. So that that's half half of it. So anyway, uh I'll probably miss that. I've been going out there for I don't know how many years uh

and give a presentation. So some of those things. Other than that, I have three deputies graduating on this coming Friday. So, I'll have three more pat uh uh deputies out patrolling. We've had to do a lot of 12-hour shifts and so forth, so I've been running um a little slack. Uh but uh be able to uh uh get them back on the road and so forth. So, um the there's a we're going down there's about four of us are going to go down to that graduation, too, for those three three deputies. So anyway, that's all I got unless you have any questions. We had a a major fire yesterday in Sunny View. Uh a shed caught fire. Uh there was a lot of uh damage and equipment that that was uh lost in that, but uh we had a lot of area fire departments come in with water and stuff, but the volunteers were able to to contain it to that just that it was far enough away from residents and stuff, but the shed was a total loss in the equipment. So, but firemen did a good job getting that getting that under control. So,

just a quick with the three new deputies you've got coming on board will be how many total deputies? What's that? No. With the three new deputies you've got coming on board, that will give you a total of how many deputies? That will be that will be then I'll have they'll have 10 on patrol. So, I'll have nine deputies and then one sergeant on patrol. Okay.

So, that increases to 17. But I have and and actually uh Commissioner Vanderwal just asked me about uh my um uh and and I and I can get that out to you when I tell you where the areas of where my uh deputies are. When I say I have 20 deputies, three are assigned to jail that are deputized. I have one deputy at the uh courthouse front to um uh check in people, you know, for courts and so forth. And then I have a a school resource deputy. Um and then I have two investigative deputies. So actually uh I have nine plus one to patrol. So but I I'll give you a chart and because there's a lot of things have changed in the last year. So

Okay. Yep. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks Sheriff Lori with finance. Good morning. Morning. Good morning.

I thought I would just um give a few reminders today to the public. We do have the kiosk out at Lewis where you can renew your registrations, um your driver's license, different features they're adding, um or planning on adding to that all the time. If you go into Lewis, it is over near the um service counter. So, just wanted to remind people of that. You can also do things online at this site. um all those different things. If you that interests you, take a screenshot of that. Um it's kind of handy for when you need something and our office is closed or it's snowing or something and you don't want to get out, you can do that online. A reminder that April is property tax time. Um, of course my date is wrong on here because I just grabbed this out of my file, but uh taxes are due first half the end of April, second half the end of October. Um, you can pay those online. Uh, the information is on there. It is also um you can go to the Brookings County website and reach it through that quite easily. To go along with taxes, we have the um senior citizen and disabled tax freeze. This has really changed this year. The numbers have really increased. Your valuation can now be up to $514,500. So that really went up high. Um also the incomes those raised to 56,595 for a single household a combined household is 66,885. that does include your interest, your

social security, all of those things. Um, but it is a a lot more people are using that this year with those numbers going up. So, wanted to remind people of that. The deadline is April 1st. However, if you miss that deadline, contact our office because we can work something out. You'll see later in the meeting today, we had uh late applications and we can approve those with commission approval. Um there is also a disabled veteran and surviving spouse property tax exemption. I don't know anything about this one other than we have it and we do have a few people on it in the county. This is run through the equalization office. Um otherwise I left my phone with my information over there but we have um some openings for elections or for for elections for the upcoming election. Um we have and correct me if I missed somebody. Um we have register of deeds. Christy Cruz is running for register of deeds. She's the only person who has applied so far with a petition. Um my office for my position which you um we have Jenna Baker, she has turned in petition. We have uh the sheriff's office. We have Manny Langstrat. We have Dave Bitler and Sean Hustler Commission. We have Kelly Vanderwal. Um, and I'm stumping here.

Ellen Broody, Larry Jensen, and Alan Broody. And I'm missing somebody, aren't I? As Marty turned in, Marty Stanwick. So, there you go. It's, you know, I knew I needed my phone with me. Um,

but this crowd, I might change my mind. He might he might pull that. He does have time to pull it. So, um there are positions open. Um if you wish to run as a Republican or Democrat, you need that in by the end of April or Octo. Oh, for the love of God. See, I'm retiring for a reason. Uh you need those in by the end of March. And if you want to run as an independent by the end of April or Yes, April. April. I'm going back to my spot. Thank you. I I did have a question on that kiosk. What are the hours of availability out at whatever Lewis's hours are?

So, it' be available at the on the weekends also? Yes. Lori, were you guys going to present the annual report or is that is Jen going to do that? Jen is going to do that right now. All right. You can go sit down if you'd like. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Thank you, Lori. Hi, I'm Jen Beller, deputy finance officer. Um um just going to go over the annual report with you real quick. Um so what's in the agenda is the published annual report. So by statute by March 1st, the annual report has to be filed with legislative audit um and then published in all the legal papers within 30 days. Um and it has it'll be published in the papers later this week and it's been filed with legislative audit. So what's in the agenda is the published report. Um so what that has on it is what we call the major funds. General fund, road and bridge, uh county building. Those are the major funds and then all of our other funds are combined into that other governmental funds line. So yeah, just the top half is all your revenues and then your expenditures and it shows you how that affected the fund balance at the bottom. And um so we've got our overall at the end of 2025 the overall net position of the county was that 34,2,42966. Um that's all funds combined. And then the long-term debt, you'll see that I'll cover I'll give you specifics on that here in a second. Is that 5,82,000? Can you turn that on? Oh, so this just shows a little breakdown of all of our cash cash assets, investments. Our investments are our CDs. We got the 3 million 4,000 in CDs. Um, and then it shows down here how that's broken out. Um, so of all those funds, rural access infrastructure is restricted. um detention center is expansion. So

that's um money that we're using to pay down the debt for the bond for the jail. Um other restricted is that 226 949. That would be things like E911, 247, all those little funds that are still restricted by either statute or an outside agency is restricting that money. And then unrestricted is the 31 million and that's going to be anything in well I'll show you we'll switch to this one. So the unrestricted is going to be general fund. We have you have 20 million assigned for different projects and then unassigned is the 5.8. Um road and bridge is also unrestricted 2.6 million and then the courthouse. Um but most of the other governmental funds which is those special revenue funds is restricted money that we have to use for specific purposes. Um and this one is kind of small but it shows those special revenue funds. It's got E911 emergency management domestic abuse 247 register of deeds vulga tiff. The opioid, you'll see the opioid is sitting has 11 million or 11,800 in fund balance and that can only be used for certain things. Um, and then there's still 1.2 in rural access infrastructure and then the jail debt service has a balance in there that we will use over time to pay down that debt. Um, a lot of these is money in, money out, like to the E911. We just get that money in and we turn around and send it to the to where it needs to go. Same with register um domestic abuse, sorry. Um, and those type of things. That's those um we like to show you this one every year. It's the money. It's the fiduciary

funds. So, those are all the 700 funds. So, that's your towns, townships, um, road districts. basically anybody that we're collecting property tax money for or state revenue. So wind tax money um any of that shared revenue that we get in and then we have to distribute out to those entities. So we over the year got $61 million in um sent back out again 61 million and so then it's always going to have a fund balance because we some of the money would come in say in January but or sorry in December but we don't send it out till January. So there's always going to carry a little fund balance but that just shows how much money is coming through our office throughout the year for other entities. that one. And then this is just the long-term debt. Show you the breakdown of that. Um we're sitting at the end of the year, we had 5.8 million in long-term debt. Um it's broken down into the HVAC bond. That was that was things that were done over in the courthouse. Um so that we don't have a lot of time left on that. That um matures in 2029, 405,000. And then the jail, you'll see we've still got until 2037. And that shows you that amount due. And then based on accounting standards, anything over any leases over a year are considered long-term debt. And so our community health rent, we do a three-year lease with them, which will be up this November. So that gets carried in the um books as long-term debt. So that's all I got. Is there any questions? All right. Thank you.

Hey, thank you. Thank you, Jeff. Bev, I'm guessing you're going to take longer in two minutes, probably. Okay. Yeah, we've got our scheduled nine. So, um Bob, can you get her in in two minutes?

Good morning.

Morning. Last week we attended the township meeting which which was a good event. Today down in Sou Falls there's a National Weather Service flood outlook going on. I sent Richard down there to do that so I could come to this meeting on March 5th. Our zoning meeting's been changed. Typically it would be tonight but it was changed because all the townships are meeting tonight and majority of our zoning board is on township board. So we switched that to Thursday night this month. Uh March 12th, we've got a PPCC/POD meeting at the fire station, I believe. Uh March 23 to 25, Department of Health's got a healthc care coalition conference in OAM. And March 24th, we've got our weather spotter training at the East Fire Station in Brookings. Everyone's invited. It's going to be standing room only probably, but uh we're going to do the best we can. And any questions? Any questions for Bob?

Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Bob. We're close enough. We have a scheduled number eight scheduled agenda item 9 9:00 a.m. Uh Eric Paulie from Excel Energy, Community Relations Manager, South Dakota. Hi there.

I'm actually Randy Fordise with XL Energy working on the project. Eric Holly is uh in the back there. He is our community relations manager for South Dakota. So, your uh uh main contact for um really anything Excel Energy related and including on this project. Um first off, thank you uh for inviting us here today and giving us some time to uh give you an update on the Power and Midwest project. It's always great to be in Brookings. I uh actually lived here in second and third grade before my parents moved to Iowa. So, I love coming back and going to make sure I hit next for lunch. Um Power on Midwest is a Do I have control of the slides? No, I do. Okay.

Okay. Yeah, you can move forward. Um, Power Midwest is a new uh high voltage transmission project that uh Excel Energy and Ottertale Power are proposing for the region and uh really important project. We're making progress on identifying things like routes and things like that and I'll get to that in a second. Uh but did want to give you kind of a background on the need for the project and our process going forward. Stacy. Um, you know, one of the main things that we're really starting to see all energy companies in the region is that electric electric use is growing throughout the entire region and that's putting stress on the system particularly as we start looking forward in the 2030s and 40s and the current electric system just won't have the capacity to reliably serve customers throughout South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Uh, all states governed by the mid-continent independent system operator. the regional operator of the high voltage transmission grid that uh keeps power reliable for all of our customers. This increase in electric use combined with changing technologies expected power plant retirements especially for those plants that were built in the ' 60s7s and 80s that are just reaching the end of their useful life. In addition to that, just kind of natural electric growth that we're seeing at a pretty significant projection is just going to our current system is not going to be able to deliver the amount of electricity necessary to keep the lights on when people flip the switch. And that's our number one priority is making sure that when people need their power, it's there. Next slide, please. Um, I mentioned MYSO. This uh project in the uh Brookings area is part of a larger set of projects that MYSO studied over the last number of years looking at a variety of different scenarios both high electric growth, mid-range and low range electric growth. um the types of plant retirements, where those uh uh locations, where those retirements may occur, and the addition of new generation sources, whether it's new renewables, natural gas plants, other

technologies that we aren't really sure of yet, much more dispersed than they were in the ' 50s, 60s, and 70s when the electric industry really started to develop uh in the United States over the last century. So, in this area, as you can see, um the uh I'll talk about the green lines in a moment, but some of those uh uh gray lines are projects that are currently in progress. You'll see a gray line from Bigstone up to that dot near Alexandria, Minnesota. That is, uh that project will be approved sometime in the next couple of months and then start construction in about 2028. Um the uh orange lines that you see are 345 kilovolt lines. So, pretty familiar with those. That's what the uh Brookings County to uh Hampton project that was built in 2015 2016 time frame. Those are single pole 345 KB towers. And then what is being proposed now are those green lines. Those are 765 kilovolt towers. And I'll talk a little bit more about the technology and why the need for that technology makes the most sense in this region in a moment. But you'll see that it does connect at the Bigstone substation uh just outside of Bigstone City near the Ottertale power plant. the Brookings substation that was built in the 201516 time frame as part of the capex 2020 projects and then on to Lakefield Junction just outside of Jackson, Minnesota. Then Pleasant Valley southeast of Rochester connecting to another substation uh north of Rochester called the North Rochester substation and then extending into Wisconsin. What this what these projects altogether will do is really connect the entire region in a way that hasn't happened in the last number of decades to be able to deliver power where it's needed when it's needed as we start meeting this new kind of reality that we're looking at with plant retirements, electric growth, and uh the new generation being proposed throughout the region. Stacy, next slide, please. So, excuse me. Overall, want to just kind of walk through the benefits. You know, utilities number one

job is to provide reliable, consistent power when people turn on their lights, when they go to work, when they uh uh, you know, go to their ship to the factory. Electricity is key and it needs to be there. So, that's our number one responsibility is making sure that we can deliver power where it's needed, when it's needed. Access to existing cost-effective generation. Uh, South Dakota's no stranger to that. There's been a lot of development in recent years along the Buffalo Ridge and through North Dakota, South Dakota, and uh Southwest Minnesota and into northern Iowa as well. I think we're also going to start seeing a lot of more dispersed gas or storage or new other technologies that uh uh will also be dispersed and then be able to connect into the transmission system as those projects are cited. um access to I mentioned natural gas plants kind of those always available always ready plants that we really depend on for uh the full reliability and uh uh steady system power flow that we needs as well as emerging technologies. I started working in the industry in 2001 and the types of technologies that we can that we're seeing now that are becoming cost- effective we wouldn't even have imagined 20 years ago when I started or 25 years ago when I started doing this kind of work and then of course uh we're seeing a lot of aggraus growth and advanced manufacturing all really energy intensive and electricity intensive particularly as um uh plants automate and electrify and so this will enable that kind of electric growth throughout the entire region. as well. Next slide, please. Now, this slide admittedly gets a little wonky, uh, but I did want to show kind of what we're looking at, um, from a 20-year standpoint. We, as utilities, we have to plan for the future because these projects take a long time. Any type of utility project takes, you know, years and decades in many cases to develop. So, we look 15 to 20 years ahead when we are proposing projects. And if you look at kind of this slide, the demand in a gigawatt is u a thousand

megawws. Uh if you for easy way uh easy example is one wind turbine is generally about 2 megawatt. So the kind of scale at which um you know the type of power is used and one megawatt can power about 800 homes just to give you kind of a flavor of that. So in this region we're looking at um a pretty significant expansion of demand with that year-over-year increase in power that we're expecting to occur. And we would not be able to serve, if you look at that orange line, if we don't build these projects, we wouldn't be able to reliably serve our customers without building a really new extensive uh transmission system to serve customers throughout the entire region. So, next slide, please. Um, again, this gets a little wonky and I'm not an engineer, but what the way that our engineers study reliability is with power flows and is there too much or too little power flowing on a transmission system because what what that does if there's too much it can cause a break essentially a fault in the system somewhere usually at a substation. So it's not as if something falls down or anything, but it does uh cut power to an entire area if uh either power flow is too high or too low. What these projects will do is mitigate that so that we have that steady state of power flowing through the system at all times uh and we can get generation from where it's uh where it's generated to the customers that eventually use it. Um, without these projects, we would be looking at about 1,300 megawws not being served throughout this kind of immediate region. Again, one megawatt can power about a thousand homes. And so, you're looking at hundreds of thousands of homes that would not be able would not be served in all of the associated businesses and developments without building this kind of project. So, next slide, please. And I we included this slide because I think it really shows um that you know one of the things that we hear is oh

you're just building this power to ship it off to the cities and it doesn't you know benefit South Dakota or rural areas as much. And what this shows is a uh an example of a single day in February where we've got a lot of generation in the North and South Dakota air North Dakota and South Dakota areas. a lot of that power is flowing on the system to the east towards the cities. Uh and then also down into Iowa as well. Uh so at midnight and 7 am pretty standard kind of low electric use times. But then when you flip to where our peak normally is in the evening hours, you would see that flow reverse. So we're actually getting a lot of power from the southern part of the Mso system, whether it's in Wisconsin, power coming from the Chicago area heading north into Minnesota and then eventually into the Dakotas. And this is just a one day type of area or one day situation. So that's how quickly power flows can change. Sometimes we think of things more along the lines of seasonal demand or things like that, but it's really at a daily basis where we see power moving and peaks moving from east to west or from north to south. In this part of the region, we're generally a winter peaking area. There's a lot of electric heat. there's a lot uh so we have a lot of winter peaking as opposed to you know summer air conditioning load and things like that that you would see in other parts of the region as well. So I just wanted to include that because I think it uh you know explains that it's not just for you know shipping power to from some area to another area. It really benefits the entire region. So next slide please. So specifically on uh this project I mentioned the substations we connected to so I won't go into a lot of detail here. Uh the blue areas that you see both in South Dakota and in Minnesota are the uh notice areas or study areas in South Dakota. It's essentially an 8 mile wide uh area along the border between uh Brookings or a little bit south of the Brookings substation and up

to the Bigstone substation. Uh we uh started looking in probably you know the fall of 2025 to begin identifying potential routes to connect into those substations. came out in uh late October with the first round of open houses in uh each of the counties. Wanted to make sure that we started look asking for feedback on you know potential impacts. What are the areas that are sensitive? Uh here's how we do routing. We try to limit impacts to homes to aggra to agriculture operations things like that. Are there areas that we're not are there things that are important to the community that we may not be aware of? And so just started asking those initial questions. came back again in January with the second round of open houses where we presented some route options and then uh Stacy were able to get the uh map in there. Okay. Yeah. Yep. So, I'll talk about that in a sec. If we could go back to the notice area. Yeah. So, these are some of the route options that we started looking at in over the past couple of months. Uh you'll see in a few areas we are still evaluating some different route options, uh multiple route options. And in this area, let's go ahead and skip forward to the next map. And then you can see a little bit more detailed area of the county kind of where we're looking at on these route options. So the purple one would be the 765 KV route that would connect to a new substation southwest of the existing Brookings County substation. There's a lot of infrastructure already built around that substation with I think at least one potentially two gas plants, another substation, and it's a really pretty hilly area. So, we weren't able to find a location for the new substation. So, we um are working on locations further south than that with a 345 KB connection back to the existing Brookings substation and then um looking at two routes to exit uh from South Dakota into Minnesota to head towards that Lakefield Junction substation

outside of Jackson that I mentioned. Go ahead to the next one, Stacy. So I mentioned, you know, Y 765KB technology and um the towers that I think most people are used to seeing are the single pole 345 KB structures. They've served our system well. It's what we're used to building. It's what we're used to finding routes for. They're just not able to meet the need that we see coming in the future with all of those things that I've talked about over the past few minutes. 765 KB technology because of the amount of uh electricity that will run through the tower or through the conductor uh is just a lot more efficient. And you can see kind of an example here. A single 765 KV tower can deliver the same amount of energy as three double circuit 345 KV towers or six uh single circuit 345 KV towers. The amount of rightway for a a single 345 KV tower is 150 ft. For the 765 KV tower, it's 250 ft. So 125 ft on either side of the line. If we were to deliver the same amount of electricity using 345 KV technology, we'd need 450 if we were building double circuit or up to 900 ft of rightway for single circuit uh 345 KV towers. They wouldn't be placed, you know, right next to each other. They'd be spread throughout the community, but it'd be a lot larger impact to a lot more land owners. And so that's one of the key reasons that we've uh selected 765 KV in addition to the uh efficiencies of delivering with a higher voltage uh technology. Next slide please. A little bit more detail on the structures themselves. Uh because of the the weight of the conductor, we do need uh to use lattice tower structures versus single pole structures. They would be immensely tall if we were going to use single pole structures. Um these will be about 150 to 175 ft. I mentioned the 250 ft rightway. So 125 ft from the

center of uh the structure. They would be on four posts with concrete foundations uh built in them about 44 ft deep and about uh five per mile. So 1100, 1200 feet apart depending on the topography. As flat and straight, you can generally go quite a ways uh uh uh with structure spans. If it's hilly or if you have to make turns, those could be shorter as well. The next slide, please. All right. From a permitting perspective, uh the South Dakota does require us to submit a facility permit application to the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission. We will submit that by the fall of this year in September. And then we also have uh county level permits in uh each of the counties that this would go through, including Grant, Duel, and Brookings. And we would expect to submit those in early 2027, so after the kickoff of the South Dakota facility permit review. Um, and uh, well, I don't know a specific month, but I would say the first quarter of 2027 is when we would be back with that official permit application in Brookings County. Uh, next slide, please. And just again, a little bit about our public engagement efforts. We've got a website. The URL is on the last slide that we'll see in a second, but we have held a couple of rounds of open houses. We're also starting to uh reach out to directly to land owners uh within each of the counties that could be affected by the routes and just start having a little more individualized conversations about what this could look like and what the easement negotiation process is and things like that. Learning a little bit more about each of their properties too. So, next slide. Uh and again, the route development, you know, we I showed that kind of eight mile wide corridor in addition to, you know, the uh the current route proposals that we're looking at. As we start to look at those, you know, route corridors, we narrow those down to preliminary routes, do some additional review on, you know, homes or buildings that could be affected, how close all of those are. Uh what uh what are land use issues? Are there federal or state lands that are in there? Are there um uh you

know, is it generally agriculture? What kind of uh what kind of agriculture are we looking at? Is it livestock? Is it rowcrop? Those kind of things. So we can identify all of those. Identify a proposed route that we think minimizes the overall impacts to each project. and then come up with the final route that we proposed in the facility permit to the PUC. As I mentioned, that'll be filed in September. Next slide, please. Uh, from a schedule standpoint, you know, we're at early in 2026, so we're uh uh just continuing to answer questions from land owners as questions come in, engaging with the local governments throughout the area and developing that facility permit for the PUC. We'll file that, as I mentioned, in September. Expect about a year for uh that review. So, we'd have a decision sometime in uh mid 2027, mid to late 2027, call it. Uh and along with the county permits, uh assuming we do get approval in that time frame, then we would begin negotiating easements with land owners uh late 2027, early 2028 and start doing design and engineering and construction, procurement of materials and all of those kind of things with construction in the 2030 to 2034 time frame. Uh, next slide. And that is it. We do have a website at poweronmidwest.com/south dakota. People can email or call us at south dakota poweronmidwest.com or the phone number up there. And um we try to get back to people within about a day. Uh if it's a fairly general question about what's the route or what's the process, where are you at in the process, that kind of thing. for some more um uh substantive questions or difficult questions that uh we may not have a direct answer to. We'll engage with some of our experts to make sure we get the correct information. So ask people to be patient if it come if it takes a couple of days for us to get back to them. But thank you for the time and happy to answer any of your questions.

So I have a a question about the towers, the 765 structures. Of course I grew up in central South Dakota. All the towers coming from the dam headed east, headed west, headed all over. What scale are those compared to those metal towers that are going across Hughes County and and all over in there?

Probably pretty similar. I'd say because the height on these is likely a little bit taller. I'm not sure of the specific project that uh you're referring to. Um generally lattice towers that were built in the '7s were probably in the 120 to 140 ft range and these as I mentioned are probably around 150. So call it about 30 to 40 ft taller, maybe a little bit wider at the base as well. Okay.

When do you plan on having your next round of community engagement? Yeah, we uh thank you uh Mr. Chair, Commissioner. We don't have any uh meetings currently scheduled. Um we are developing the application right now, but are always happy to come and meet with the board or answer any questions that people may have. I I guess I could add one thing onto that. Um after we file the facility permit application within 30 days, the South Dakota PUC does hold uh uh their first set of public meetings. So those would be if we file in September, those would be held sometime in October.

Next question I have is in Duel County currently, they just put in a 2,000 ft setback. Yes, sir. How do you feel that you'll be able to to work with that and work with those those land owners on that?

Sure. And Mr. Chair, Commissioner will obviously meet all state, federal, and local regulations. That's part of our responsibility as companies. It does make for uh when there are setback ordinances like that, it does make it difficult, we think, to find what could be the least impactful route. Um, we always try to stay as far away from homes and buildings as we can, but we also try to follow field lines, section lines, things like that, so that we can, you know, work with land owners and hopefully avoid some of the issues that that may create. Setback ordinances can limit our flexibility in doing so. Uh the fortunate part of their uh setback ordinance is there are waiverss that we can get from land owners if we're going along a field line or a section line or something as opposed to we need to be 2,000 ft away from a residence and the only way to do that would be kind of going diagonally through a field or something along those lines which isn't our preference. Um so we prefer to be able to work directly with land owners versus you know having some sort of restriction like that but as I mentioned we'll work with the the laws that are in front of us. The question I got is uh your permits uh through the PUC and the county, what what uh which ones take presidents? Which ones first? And then do you have to have the county permits before you go to the PUC? And and then also your uh your easements with land owners, which were how does that all fit together?

Mr. Chair, Commissioner, uh good question. uh the uh state I'm not 100% familiar with state law but we will file the facility permit with the PUC first and then file our uh applications with each county counties vary I think Brookings uh uh county's cup lasts for three years duel and grant I think are one year with potential extension so we kind of time things because we want to make sure that it uh a a cup will lead us to construction so we don't have to come back and go through the process again um the state permits do supersede local ordinances in most cases, but the South Dakota PUC is also very differential to local officials and prefer that we're able to work through any issues uh as opposed to asking them to kind of weigh in or step in on things. So, um the so from a timing perspective, it would be the state permit while that's in process because it takes at least a year or so. We would then file with with each county for conditional use permits

and you would have easements in place when you would file with the county then? No, we would uh be negotiating easement options uh knowing that there could be some route adjustments. Um we the South Dakota PUC likes us to have up to 70% easement options with land owners and uh so we're going to start that process fairly soon to uh start talking with land owners and then um but we would expect permits to be issued before all easements are secured I think is the best way to put it. Okay.

Anybody else? All right, I think that's from the commission. I think that's that's good. Okay, appreciate your time. Again, thank you for your time. Any questions you have, uh, obviously the website's got a lot of information for both you and your constituents, including an interactive map where people can both see and drop in questions directly on the map. I should have mentioned that. Phone number and email, again, are staffed each day. So, we try to get people uh information as quickly as we can. And if there's any time that you'd like us to come back and present, we're happy to do so. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Uh the added uh number B under schedule agenda item for public comment. Uh we would ask uh uh a five minute time time limit on each uh public comment. Uh if you would come up, state your name and uh where you live in Brookings County. Uh and then we will uh keep them to as close to five minutes as we can. So um we will open up the public comment. Thank you. My name is Steve January. I live dual county. I live in farm and a half section of land three miles west and a mile and a half south of Gary. Just uh for introduction uh my land was eminent domained by the capex 2020 project. So, I have a 300 three 345 kilovolt uh poles on my property. The uh where it crosses the road is 946 ft from my house. When I drive a tractor underneath it and I'm listening to KWAT radio for weather alerts, it statics out. I can't imagine what a 9 765 volt line would static how far away that would on on the radio. And I lose use the radio obviously for weather alerts. Uh the tornadoes we had on June 28th of last year destroyed the farm just a mile south of my house. The picture of the power line talking about the dimensions. Uh what I have is a 700 or 175 foot tall which is 10 foot taller than the chimes on the c the campus down here which I'm told is 165t tall. And there'd be a spread of uh of 150 ft approximately 2500 square ft of land taken out of service underneath the

pole each pole. So about a quarter acre per mile of land would be uh rendered useless basically. uh other than talking about uh whether the the line is is needed or not, you know, they're talking about data centers in Duel County. And there were testimonials how we have an excess of electricity in Duel County, not only Dual County, but northeastern South Dakota. The data center guy said, "Well, basically, we're going to suck up some of this electricity and lower your rates." Uh there's a currently a wind project in Brandt on hold because they can't find a buyer for the electricity. Uh at the county commission meeting a couple of meetings ago, Outerail had representatives there and one of the questions I asked was, you know, the the uh Bigstone Power Plant is scheduled for closure retirement around 2040. I said, what are your plans after that? They kind of looked at each other. There were six of them there and they said, "Well, we don't really know that." Well, the gentleman here just said they look out at least 20 years in advance. So, we all know they can't build a fossil fuel plant in Minnesota. So, we're exporting all this power to the Twin Cities. I'm here to encourage you to pass this 2,000 ft uh setback. Uh, I'd like to call your attention to this British Columbia Medical Journal study that uh I uh have this was in two November 2008 this was published. In the interest of time, I'd like to call your attention to the second page to the paragraph that I have bracketed and I'd like to read it quickly. However, a more recent study showed an elevated risk of leukemia among children living in homes in distances much greater than the 60 uh meters from uh high voltage power lines. This study involved close to 30 30,000 matched case

control pairs of children living in United Kingdom. It was found that children living in homes as far as 600 meters, 600 meters, by the way, is 1,968.5 ft from power lines had an elevated risk of leukemia. An increased risk of 69% for leukemia was found for children living within 200 meters of power lines while an increased risk of 23% was found for children living within 200 to 600 meters of the lines. This study was notable in that it found some elevated elevation of risk much greater distances than previous studies. And if you look at the third page, that's all the links that they had and the resources that they had. Ottertale at a dual county commissioners meeting had a doctor there from out east someplace. I'm sure he wasn't there on his own dime, but he said basically, oh, that's this is is not true. There is absolutely no risk of anything by living next to high voltage power lines. Well, if you look at all these references, among of them, I think the Centers for Disease Control and so forth, I think you could probably find a doctor, if you didn't look too hard, that would would challenge that. Just like 20 years ago, they told us that New York City and Washington DC was going to be underwater due to climate change. Now, that might not be all bad, but we know that that isn't going to happen. Okay? So, among other things, I am here to encourage you to pass this ordinance. All right, Steve, I think your your time is up.

You can finish with your last statement. Okay. The last thing is and Mary Nospish was going to be here, but you have family commitments and that stray voltage for water with dairy cattle study was done by veterinarians in Wisconsin over 800 dairy farms and there is a relationship between high voltage power lines and stray voltage that dairy cattle were hesitant to drink. And we all know that if dairy cattle don't drink, they don't melt. So that's another thing. I do thank you for your time. Thank you. Next.

Greetings. Please state your name for me, please. I'm sorry. Please state your name.

I'm Sue Engelman and I live in Brookings County. I am a by trade I am an electronics engineering technologist and I have worked at the hospital as a biomed technician for many years. I'm asking the Brookings County Commissioners to match the dual county zoning setback requirements that transmission lines with voltage greater than 345 kilovolts must have a setback of 2,000 ft from any inhabited residents in all zoning districts. This includes but not limited to support structures greater than 100 ft tall or the base diameter of 20 ft of 25 ft or a wingspan of 30 ft. I am speaking on behalf of saving our county from this monster power on Midwest transmission line that will only benefit Minnesota. This transmission line is proposed to run from Bigstone Power Plant south to Brookings County and then east to their destinations in Minnesota. As power on Midwest information sheets state, the plan was started in 2025 and the expected power on inservice date is 2034. Bigstone power plant is slated to be retired shut down between two 2040 and 2046 because it is a coal fired power plant and not a green energy power plant. This would allow for only 6 to 12 years of service. I attended the Brookings dual county commissioners meeting and also spoke directly to PowerOn Midwest representatives when they were at the information meeting in Brookings. When asked what the future plans of replacing Bigstone power plant was, they said they didn't have plans yet. If this project is taking 9 years to plan and power up, one would think they would already have plans for replacement power sources. if they are building the largest power transmission

lines available to this date. Each of the 765,000 volt and better known as the 765 KV towers will be close to 50 foot wide at the height of its 175 foot and the width is 150 foot. They are saying they need 250 ft of rightway around each tower. This means that all trees, vegetation, pollinators, and animals will be uprooted and death and land erosion will be what remains around those areas forever. To put the size of the power towers in perspective, our own Brookings SDSU Coughlin Campanil, the face of the South Dakota State University, stands 165 foot tall. That means that each of the 765,000 volt tower structure is actually 10 foot taller than the campanal with fif with five power tower structures per mile or more. There is constant noise emanating from the 760 KV power transmission lines and also a red light flashing on each tower at night. The largest power lines currently in South Dakota are the 345 KV transmission lines. As large as those existing towers are, the 765 KV are much larger. The closest 765 KV lines to South Dakota are located in Illinois. If you have or care about any young children or even yourself, please assist us in fighting these power lines and the AI data centers in our glorious state of South Dakota. We are killing our earth with these types of things. What will our children and grandchildren have to live with? If we don't stop this now, there will be no opportunity to turn

this around and have our natural resources unharmed. These companies are telling us there are no harmful effects from any of these structures. I beg to differ. They are selling us the moon while we are selling out our children and their futures if we let this travesty go unstopped. Power on Midwest states there have been studies over a 40-year period funded by the WHO and other organizations. However, they do not tell you that they are only short-term studies with outcomes that are planned. not a 40-year study that shows actual negative health impacts. These studies are funded by industryinfluenced parties and not independent studies made without gain to those that are paying for the studies. I brought up this fact to the Power on Midwest representatives and when pressed, Power on Midwest admitted that any of the abovementioned studies were only done on the smaller 345 kilovolt transmission lines and not with the 765 kilovolt transmission lines. Power on Midwest has no long-term or short-term health detriment studies on the 765 kilovolt transmission lines since the 765 transmission lines haven't been around for 40 years yet.

Mankind Sue, can you can you wrap up your your five minutes?

I have it. Mankind and Wankind are electrical beings. Our bodies act like an energy wave broadcaster and receiver incorporating and responding to EMFs, electromagnetic frequencies. In fact, scientific research has demonstrated that every cell in your body have may have its own EMF, helping to regulate important functions and keep you healthy. Strong artificial EMFs like those from power lines can scramble and interfere with your body's natural EMF, harming everything from your sleep cycles and stress levels to your immune response and DNA. Again, I ask for the 2,000 ft setback. Thank you. Thank you, Sue.

Hi, I'm Janai White. I'm from Aurora and I just have a few comments to make and I guess uh the first thing I back up, you know, the other people with please, please consider a 20,000 2,000 foot setback. Um, what this gentleman from Dual County said terrifies me. I've been a nurse for over 30 years. Um, I've seen cancer rates skyrocket and so now we're going to add this in and it it terrifies me. Um, I I know that they say that this is, you know, for the betterment of our community, but when when you guys showed when they showed the benefits of this and that it's going to benefit Brookings County or it's going to benefit us, that kind of went over my head a little bit because um I I'm not sure how. I'm I'm probably a little bit more open to it, but if it's going to benefit Minnesota, Illinois more than us, I I guess that's where my question is. How how is it truly going to benefit benefit us? Um the other thing is there's another family from from the Elkton area. Uh they couldn't be here today. She said it's going to be in their backyard. She said, 'You know, we moved out into the country so we didn't have to deal with any of this and now here it is going to be in our backyard and there is nothing we can do about it. So, I think there's a lot of frustration in our county. Um, so I just hope that you really listen to people and and really hear their concerns. Um, and the last thing for for this company, I did go to their open house. They could not answer any of my questions. I did get I did get more

questions answered from from the gentleman here from from Dual County. When I when I asked her, well, tell me um how is this how is this going to affect us? She couldn't answer. Um when I said tell me is this going to be going through Aurora, Vulga, Elton, she had no idea what what where where any of these towns were. So, I'm just going to tell you guys when you guys come to Brookings County, you better do a little research and know where your towns are and and the places where it's affected because that was very frustrating that I took my and again, this isn't venting towards you. It's it's venting towards these guys that I I take my time and I'm going to learn about this, learn about this at the open house and she could not answer any of my questions. She said she's from Minneapolis and she didn't know. So, thank you.

Thank you, Janiah. Nope.

Thank you. My name is Charlie Fster and I'm a resident of Brookings. I just uh want to make a a short point that the last mile of the proposed route in uh Brookings County, the last mile going north uh abuts the Oak Lake Field Station uh which does a tremendous amount of community uh outreach including uh hunting for wounded warriors, junior hunts, uh muzzle loading for the public. Um and we do have uh controlled burns and these burns are not only to control uh for uh woody encroachment on the property but uh we uh conduct a very successful they conduct a very I'm speaking as a public citizen uh they conduct a very successful fire academy uh which trains uh property owners as well as well as people from local agencies on how to uh conduct a uh a safe prescribed I burn. Thank you.

Thank you. My name is Little Wayne Junkie. I live across the road from the SDSU field station by Oak Lake. Quite colorful name to the place where I live. what used to be there. When I went to the meetings and everything, I had some questions. I called the Brookings zoning office. I And they were very very good. They they did not look down at me and everything because even of the stupid questions I had, I have talked to members of this board. They have returned my phone calls promptly. Thank you. You should, if you're going to get up here and talk, you should know what you're talking about. You guys have helped me. I was literally amazed. Brookings County was zoned in 1976. And so then I said, "Well, what do you have on the books for protection for not our houses, our homes from these transport lines?" Nothing. 50 years. Why the well? Because they have not been of this magnitude. Well, we they are now. We need protection. We need protection from the commissioners, the zoning offices, the 2,000 ft, in my opinion, is a start in the right direction. Anyway, when you look at their literature that they have provided for us, they said they're going to send certified letters

to land owners, homeowners within a half mile of the proposed lines. Half mile is under is excuse me is over the 2,000 ft that we're asking for. So they're already admitting that there's going to be the adverse whatever from this line within that more than probably any other place. Obviously the closer you are to it, the more it's going to affect you. So I ask that the board considers this 2,000 ft. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anybody else that would like to give public comment? All right. I thank everybody that has given public comment. Um we will be moving on to our uh department head reports. Back to our department head reports uh with register deeds. Good morning. Morning.

I have my uh 2025 report for the business and revenue generated from our office. And the first uh page that we're looking at is the 2024 and 2025 comparison. I'd like to kind of compare and see how we've done. Um, actually this year we are over um we we have a plus of $66,51.50 over what the business that we did in 2024. 20 2025. Um, a lot of that revenue came from transfer fees. And transfer fees are based on a dollar per thousand of the purchase price of any deed that comes in of any real estate that has been um been sold. A transfer fee or an exempt code has to be on any deed. And like I said, it's based on a dollar per thousand of the purchase price. And uh in 2025 we did $289,555 on transfer fees. And then the general fees, which is the next line, $144,686. And uh what is included in general fees is the $30 flat fee that we charge for any document that is recorded in our office. And also um in that is um UCCC financing statement and if we ever had any location notice which we had none in in 25 that would be included in that but uh it's solely then the recording uh fee and the UCCC's. Next line is marriage licenses and

$8,920 was brought in. That is the only um line that is on the negative. We sold less marriage licenses in 25 than we did in 24. We sold 223 marriage licenses at $40 a piece. certified copies is $41,775 and that includes any um birth, death, and marriage um certified copies that we issued. We issued 2,785 at $15 each. the last line and that is the copies and that includes um it's called PTS and Farm Service here in Brookings and Farm Credit Service in Watertown purchases them every month and it also includes any copies that the title companies purchase and that is $4,859. Um the uh it's the what Farm Service Agency and Farm Credit service pays as just a minimal is 20 cents a copy and the title companies currently um in resolution is 15 cents a copy. We had an increase overall like I said earlier at $66,51.50. Um the next section is a breakdown of the general fees and the filing fees. Uh UCCC's are in there. And then the next section is a breakdown of the certified copies of birth, death, and marriage. Uh the next section is uh the general fees and then the tech fee that is taken

out of those general fees. Um, in 2012, the legislature passed the bill that $5 of that $30 flat fee would go for the register of deeds office technology. Uh we we are the uh library of the county that has to keep all the records from homesteading times and keep them secure and available so to speak available for the public because our records room is open to the public. But um it has the paper copies of the old records fade and get the in bad shape. And that's why last year I did a scanning to keep for digital to keep them um safe and that future generations can access them. Um that all comes out of that tech fee. It's $5 out of the $30 fee and um $3 of that actually just stays in the county. $2 of it goes to the South Dakota Association of County Officials and then August of each year it is divide that that money is divided into 66 different checks for every county. um that is is to protect the smaller counties that do not generate as many documents as we bigger counties do. They have the same problem that we do in keeping them their documents safe. Some of the counties u when we started this did not even have a copy machine or a scanner. They had to go to another office to to

get that. So, we needed to do something to help um pro, you know, provide a way that the entire state will stay um safe in that area. Anyway, um so you'll notice on that uh third that fourth section there where it says general fees, it says plus $4,102 from SDAC. That's that check that every county received. um this past August. Um after that, I've got it uh more detailed for everything um that we we do and we we um send out of that um vital or the the vital records, the certified copies. The county's share is $5 for each birth certificate, $10 for each or $5 for each death certificate, and $15 for the entire uh marriage certificate. The state gets $10 of the birth and death u certified copies from the marriage licenses. um our local do uh domestic abuse shelter gets $30 from the $40 that we collect. So that basically that stays in our county, but it is by law that we have have that $30 split out and then the county share is $10. So, at the very bottom is um of that 489,795 that we brought in, 450,821 actually stays in the county. Uh the next the next sheet is it's just a breakdown that I keep of every month

of what we take in and that's where I got my total for the year basically. But I thought that um maybe you would like to see that breakdown. And then the the third one is just a comparison. And I forgot to change the totals on the top. It's 2024 and 2025, not 2023. But um that's just a breakdown of how many mortgages, deeds, miscellaneous, the number of records and the number of pages. I basically also keep the number of pages. Um because one of the title companies does purchase the documents from us um every month and they we they title companies are charged by page. Um we cannot charge the title companies any more than it costs to produce that. So um that's some minimal minimal fee, but I do have to keep track of of how many how many pages that is. So, um I guess uh any any questions?

Thank you very much for your hard work, Bev. Great information here. You're welcome. Yes. Thank you very much, Beth. Yes. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I don't think we got missed any department heads, so we'll move on to number nine. Regular B business action to approve resolution uh number 26-07 resolution declaring a fire danger emergency in Brookings County and prohibiting open burning. Do I have a motion to approve? So moved. I have a motion. Do I have a second? For discussion purposes, I'll second that mot.

Motion in a second. Comments. What do you got? with a recent snowfall, I don't think we need this. Um, if we look back to last Thursday when we were putting the agenda together,

you know, the conditions were a lot different than they were Saturday morning. Um, we felt it wasn't necessary just to get it talk about it. I did see that uh south of here and they had a bad fire here last week and that's something we all need to take in consideration. I've said this before at previous meetings, but we just if we're doing control burns, our citizens in our county just have to do a good job of monitoring them from from start to finish. My concern, we have a the way Bob does it now with a red flag warning thing, that works. It works very well. My only concerns with that is, you know, if you have a fire that's not quite out, you know, yesterday and tomorrow is a red flag warning day, that's when we see problems. So citizens in the county, just please pay attention to control burns. Thank you.

I echo Commissioner Vanderwal's concerns. Uh and just uh please if you're going to do some burning, please call into the dispatch center and uh report that you are doing that. It kind of gives them a heads up and uh uh maybe if something happens that gets away, they they already kind of know where you're at. So please call in if you're doing any open burning. commissioners. Yes, sir. Sheriff, I talked to uh Dave Jacobson um and he echoed what you guys are saying. He didn't think at this present time with the moisture we got that it was necessary. So, all right. So, to remove this does the You have a motion and second just vote it down.

Just vote it down. All right. So, since we have a motion and a second, uh we will take a roll call vote. So, go ahead and call the role, please. Miller I Jensen nay Vanderval no post no Hustler no motion fails moving on number B action to approve re re resolution 26-08 a resolution establishing fees to be paid by licensed abstractors of for uncertified copies of record documents in the registered of deeds office. Do I have a motion to approve? Move. Second.

Motion and a second. Do we have any comments? Bev, do you have any comments?

The present resolution is quite old and it's coming. Can you come up to the microphone? The resolution that is in place now is quite old and it's at 15 cents a copy. By inflation and everything that has happened, um like our DOC pro system, the maintenance has almost doubled. Um the fee has almost doubled. So, it's costing more for us to produce these records for them, which um by law it says that we can charge what it produce us the records.

Do you know when the last one was put in place? 2007. 2007. So, 20 years. Just 19 years ago. Okay. When I came in office, you bet. All right. And across across other counties, is this about what average of what they do? did I did make a an do an email to the other counties and um some charge like 40 cents and um some charge 25 cents uh some charge 15 cents yet.

Okay, any other comments or questions for Bev? All right, thank you very much. So, where are we? Uh hearing no other comments. Uh call the role please. Jensen I. Vanderval. Hi. Miller. Hi. Post. Hi. Hustler. I. Motion carries. Letter C. Action to approve agreement 26-21 the state of South Dakota Department of Public Safety Office of Emergency Management 2025 local emergency management performance grant. Do I have a motion to approve? So move.

Second. I have a motion in a second. Bob, yes. This agreement, if it's approved, will allow them to pay us for our fiscal year 2025 reimbursements for mine and Richard LMPG that reports that we've been submitting the pier. The money had been held up and um I don't know if you had a chance to read all all the hundred of articles that they've got, but it's the standard thing for any federal grant. And of course, this is a federal grant brought in through the state of South Dakota. So, we have to if we want the money, we have to sign the document.

All right. Does anybody have any comments or questions? All right. Thanks, Bob. You're welcome. Hearing no comments or other other comments, call the role, please. Vanderwal. Hi. Post. Hi. Miller. Hi. Jensen. Hi. Hustler. Hi. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you, Bob. Letter D, action to approve abatement 26-02, an abatement application made by Brookings Municipal Utilities for parcel number 040000-11049-291-00 in the amount of $2,495. Do I have a motion to approve?

Move to approve. Second. Motion in a second. comments hearing none. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Oppos say nay. Motion carries. Letter E. Action to approve abatement 26-03, an abatement application made by Brookings Municipal Utilities for Parcel 40071-0000100-002- 0 in the amount of $384. Do I have a motion to approve? So move. Second.

Motion a second. Any comments? Hearing none. All in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Oppose say nay. Motion carries. Letter F. Action to approve abatement 26-5 an abatement application made by Clarence G. Lims for parcel 09100-11247-272-09 in the amount of $883.54. Do I have a motion to approve? So move second motion in a second. Any comments?

Hearing none. All in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Oppose. Say nay. Motion carries. Letter G. Action. Action to approve abatement 26-08 an application for a late elderly and disabled assessment freeze. Do I have a motion to approve? So move. Second. Motion in a second. Comments. Um, this falls under state law where the county commission can accept a late elderly tax freeze. Um, normal due date April 1st.

Do I have any other comments hearing? None. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Oppose say nay. Motion carries. Letter H. Action to approve abatement 26-09. Didn't we just do that one? No, I am wrong. Yep. Yep. We're do 09. Okay. Action to approve abatement 26-09 an application for late elderly and disabled assessment freeze. Do I have a motion to approve? So moved. Second.

Motion a second. Comments. This would be the same state law allows the county commission to approve an application past the um normal deadline. Any other comments? All in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Oppose say nay. Motion carries. Letter I, action to approve all all annual weed chemical bids for 2026 as presented. Do I have a motion to approve? So moved. Second. Motion and a second. Comments.

The bids were open on February 17th and the board typically approves all bids um in case there's issues with availability. Do we know has anything changed much from year-over-year? I don't have that information. I was just going to point that out. Jenna Baker from the finance office. Um

on the third column of each well the third column on nutrient but on the very far right column you will see what the increase was from last year's chemicals. It all looks to be slight increase, but as Stacy mentioned, um in years past, the board has always um approved all of the chemical bill uh bids just to ensure that um availability is not an issue. All right, any other comments? Hearing none, call the role, please. Post. I Miller. Hi, Jensen. Hi, Vanderwal. Hi, Hustler. Hi,

motion carries. Letter J, action to approve request to fill vacancy for part-time female corrections officer in the detention center. Do I have a motion to approve? So move. Second. Motion in a second. Any comments? Hearing none. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Oppose say nay. Motion carries. Letter K, action to declare the following items as surplus property to be disposed of as part of the HVAC and boiler project for the government center. Do I have a motion to approve? So moved. Second. Motion and a second. Uh any comments?

Our project is underway now for the building and there's just a number of items that need to be uh surplused and disposed of. Do we have any other comments? Hearing none. All in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Oppose. Saying A.

Motion carries. Letter L. Discussion on 214th Street uh County Road 16A from 34th Avenue to Aurora City limits limiting truck traffic. I'd open that up for discussion from the commission. Um, yeah, Commissioner Vander and myself talked about this. Uh, we had some concerns. Uh, a couple weeks ago, we posted load limits out on the stretch of road. Um, with the weather is as it's been, the warm weather, cold weather thaw, and then it gets cold. Uh there was uh significant damage uh that occurred I believe before we actually put the 7 ton peraxial low limit signs up. Uh uh with uh most of the damage is is uh kind of concentrated on about 85% of it's concentrated on the eastbound lane and uh I don't feel uh that the 7 ton per axle uh posting is sufficient. Uh, I mean with the 7 ton per axle, you could still have a potential of having almost 100,000 pound truck on that stretch of road if you had seven axles. So, um, I guess I in my opinion, I suggest putting up either no trucks or no through trucks in u, but I know enforcement is an issue. have talked to Dan with the state's attorney and also uh how we how we could actually control this. Uh we're not out to get anybody. We just kind of want to get the word out to the community that we we just uh would hope they could find a alternate route for the next couple months here while the the road is going through the thaw process. Uh we kind of

like to uh protect our investment out there. Um, and I I guess uh I guess my recommendation would get try to keep as many trucks off there as possible. So that's what I that's kind of my suggestion. I'll echo Commissioner Jensen's thoughts there. You know, just a few short years ago, this was a township road and the county's taken it over, put a huge investment in that and then we we had it blotted uh last summer. So, we're we're just trying to protect that investment. Um, not trying to get anybody, but we just ask, you know, kind of like the fire ban, just we ask residents, sorry about that. We just ask residents or, you know, truck drivers, whatever, just to stay off that road. Um, yeah, that's my comments.

Brian, has the damage and stuff been repaired? uh with the weather and the lack of products being produced right now, uh no repairs have been made, uh there are plans this summer when it's conducive to do that type of repair work to take place. It it's going to take place with our patching project. I did take a picture the other day. This is typical in that eastbound lane. As you can see, it's uh pretty ripped up out there. Um the application that we used out there, we tried to accomplish a couple things. Um mainly the dust and uh the washboards that were out there. And uh we did that. Uh but unfortunately, we knew we'd have some soft spots and some breakups, but uh this year's been a little bit different type of spring, and this is the result of it. So, as of right now, we have seven ton

7 ton. Um, if we would choose to do a no trucks or no through trucks, we would have to do a resolution. We'd have to advertise and go through that whole process. So, uh, Brian indicated to me that he could order the signs today and we could we could actually put those up. Uh, they wouldn't be enforceable till if we pass a resolution. So, okay. Is that kind of your recommendation to to what what would be your recommendation, Brian?

I mean, that's kind of up to you guys is as far as whether no through trucks or, you know, trucks that are allowed to enter and exit properties along that road. But, uh, you know, discussing with Commissioner Jensen on that, I I don't see a whole lot of that going on along this road with with, uh, folks also being able to use the alternative routes, um, and things of that nature, but, uh, whatever you guys so choose. I mean, it would take a little time to get the signs in. Brian, Brian, is there a minimum weight that you would allow on this road?

A minimum? I mean, that's another alternative, I guess, if the commission wanted to. And the only reason I'm asking is the enforcability by the sheriff's office would be better if our sign had a minimum weight because there's a specific class maximum weight. Yeah, a maximum weight. Sorry. In terms of the enforcability on the ticketing side for the sheriff's deputies that would be enforcing this, there's a specific class two misdemeanor that would fit within if we just did a maximum weight rather than doing no trucks at all. It would be better if we did a maximum weight. So, that would be my my preference.

The issue there uh Dan would be that that the sheriff's office does does not have any scales. So, it'd be hard to enforce the maximum weight unless they actually took them to a scale. Uh, that's that's what I mean. Enforcement here is is is an issue. Yeah. And we might have to if that's the alternative, we might have to draft a specific ordinance then because the the penalty side of the enforcability would be kind of where we don't have we have the authority to do it, but we would have to formulate the penalty associated with that. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Cuz right now we don't necessarily have that. We have something for weight, but not for no trucks at all.

Um I did talk to the the um highway superintendent in Kingsbury County. They have a similar situation going to uh Nordon on one of their county roads and they did put some no truck no through trucks on that route. Uh but basically what they have done is stopped some of those trucks, talked to the truck drivers, and they've had good success with just talking to those truck drivers and keeping them off the road. But they do have um in their back pocket if somebody would continue abuse their signs, they they would find them, I guess.

So enforcement would require coordination with the highway patrol or what are we talking? Yeah, good luck with that. Yeah, if there was if I mean every year every year when we go to limiting our our township roads or having our county roads, but highway patrols spread thin to get them to come in and actually want to, you know, have the time to work it. So, it's a whole new ballgame when you got weights. My deputies aren't trained for weights. You got that. It takes training to do that

and so forth. So, I'd rather see what Mr. Jensen is talking about Kingsberry as we put up signs and try to educate the public to stay off that. You know, we can have deputies around there and and warning, you know, something maybe for the future we need to and maybe invest in some digital signs, too, you know, so that we got some portable signs to put up for things like this. I know that gets to be expensive, too, but uh uh I don't want to start weighing trucks. I'm sorry. Just put a sign up says scale ahead. They'll turn and go the other way around. I have an old feed feed scale I could probably put along the road. Okay. Any other discussion?

Well, I think it's a good idea to do something to protect our investment out there with that road that we put into that. Um, you know, I I think we need some more clarity on no through trucks. What's that mean? I mean, can I Does that mean me with my one ton truck and Bobcat on there that you can't go there? What's a truck? you know, I don't and that's where um we would have to draft an actual ordinance for no through trucks with penalty, right? If we were actually going to enforce it, we have the authority to do it. We just got to figure out what the penalty is. And we don't, as of right now, we don't have an ordinance that

not specific to no through trucks. So,

okay. I think sometimes the situations are just you know communication you know we talk to a particular construction company or a supplier of something you know and they understand that but they don't always get that information to the you know employee X Y and Z. Um it it's it's an education thing when and it just got to get keep getting educated because new truck drivers that kind of stuff. But okay, any other comments or concerns?

All right. Do you have any direction you want us to go so that staff kind of knows what next steps might be? I guess my recommendation would go with uh the no trucks. Uh if Dan can figure out a penalty part on a resolution that we could possibly pass um to move forward and then possibly define, you know, cuz I don't think we're looking at limiting one ton pickups, pulling campers, pulling trailers with equipment. We're look, we're talking more uh uh class A, class B uh hall trucks.

Well, that's why I was suggesting we do a maximum weight because there's already a statute in place that if the county commission regulates a county road regarding a maximum weight, the sheriff's deputies can cite to a specific statute that's already on the books as a class two misdemeanor. So, I I understand the no through trucks, but if we go that direction, we're going to have to draft an ordinance with specific language, specific penalties. If we go maximum weight um as a resolution, we can cite to a specific statute on the books. So

Dan, would you recommend maybe just amending the resolution that we passed earlier this year uh in regards to the axle weight limit? Maybe amend just this segment of roadway maybe to 5 ton per axle. Is that what you're suggesting on this road be the maximum weight? I mean, or whatever the commission would decide. Uh I I I'm I just threw that number out there as a as a filler, but uh you know, maybe that would be a way to

Yeah, I would have to see that. It's resolution 2605, I believe. Okay. Would that be able to put that on the next agenda then? Yeah, as long as we can fit within the noticing requirements, I'll take a look at it. Okay. Okay. I'd agree with that. Five count a good number. Four or five. Yeah. And just have your signs reflect that. Correct. Okay.

Yep. Okay. So then we'll uh we'll look at doing that and uh if we can notice it for the next uh update that next and notice it for the next meeting then we'll we'll have that on the next meeting. Sounds good. So do you commit does the commission still desire to put the signs up in order for the sheriff to help educate? Even though we wouldn't necessarily have a

I mean I mean if we go with the five four or five ton I think that the sheriff's deputies would be able to with their common sense would be able to warn talk to the truck driver say hey I know you're overweight uh could you please not use this route in the future at least for a couple months till the uh it allows uh while the signs are you know you got the signs up. We just have to change the tonnage. I think that would help go a long ways with uh educating the the public on it. Education and deterrence with the sign. Yeah. Yeah.

My question is are resolutions enforceable or is it a I I'm struggling with resolution versus ordinance? So, we can enforce a resolution. We can write a ticket on a resolution. Well, I don't believe resolutions have penalties. They don't have a penalty, and that's the biggest part of it. And if we do do an ordinance, it doesn't limit it to just that road. We could, you know, there's been issues south south of of Vulga and and things like that where we might be able to implement things like that as well. But our our resolutions don't have penalties. Is that correct, Dan? Well,

they do. Or what would be the penalty be for that? Something like that.

Yeah. So, we have the authority to regulate the weight on roads. So, the county commission can take action if there's a violation of that weight limit on that road after the commission has taken action. There's a specific statute that allows you to sight to a class 2 misdemeanor. So I I guess to your question, the noticing of the weight limits on those roads, I guess is something Stacy and I can visit about as to what the the proper notice is to get the public to be aware of what I think the sign is probably the best way. I think we'll we'll go through the the formal noticing process as it as it relates to the resolution, but once that sign's in place on the road, then it triggers that statutory framework is my understanding. So,

and that would be kind of like uh speeding penalties uh in doubled for speeding in construction zones, something like that kind of is that kind of what you're thinking? Yeah, in the statutes I sent to Commissioner Vanal and Jensen, it I I list the specific statute I'm referring to as the commission's ability to regulate weight on roads. So, We'll notice it under that. Okay.

I think this is I mean just this discussion right here is a start in the right direction with informing the public. I'm sure Mandelle will have something in the paper and uh show our concerns. So I mean this is right here is a good start.

Yeah. And then if later on if we do need to draft an ordinance or if we can possibly draft something and not implement it or or that in the event that this doesn't work. So very good. All right. Moving on. Letter M commission's projects information for discussion only. in the packet was um kind of the updated commission projects budget that we had. If you recall when the um county received some ARPA dollars, um we did what we needed to do um with those dollars that we could be spending them on on these various projects that we have listed out. Um some of the requirements that they had kind of a long-term impact. Uh it was it was the the fire department's um just basic safety things. So you can see what we've spent dollars on dating back to two 2022. Um this money right now is just part of fund balance. So I think uh as part of Jennifer's report uh earlier on the in the meeting um just that unassigned fund balance would would have included this approximately just a little over $800,000 that we have left. Um there's no obligation for the commission to spend these funds in a particular manner. it can stay right where it's at and be used for anything and everything moving forward, however the commission decides and sees fit. But I wanted you to kind of see where we were at um with that based on on the spreadsheet. A

couple things that have come up um is I know Bob wants to speak to uh like an a generator for emergency management and then um two weeks ago the Elkton ambulance was in um with a request and I don't know you know my impression was that it wasn't I think some of that was for 2027 and you could you know could direct them to um do a budget request for 2027, but I think some of that request was, you know, more immediate. Um Bernice did uh reach out to me after the meeting and got me some quotes for the radios that they're asking that they were discussing and then the training that they were discussing. It's for for three of their radios, it's just over $16,000 for the training. it was $500 uh for each member. So that came to about $6,500. So those were a couple recent things that um can come up with. And Bob, I don't know you want to if you want to talk about the generator.

Yeah. On this list here on the lefth hand column, it shows fire station generator for 28750. that was initially designated to help the city hook up our ex county city generator. That's been hooked up already. So, they don't need our financial funding on that with the new fire chief that came in. Then at the 2025 where it says OAC generator, I always thought that that was part of emergency management getting a 50 kilowatt generator on a trailer so we could take it wherever it was needed to include the OAC. But since I've understood that the OAC may have a backup generator system already hooked up, which I'll have to verify, but uh the city definitely has their EOC generator hooked up at the East Fire Station. So my thoughts are we probably need about a 50 kilowatt generator for emergency management to use anywhere in the county in case of a major disaster. If we do have a disaster, the chances of renting one immediately is going to be slim and next to none. We'll be able to get one sooner or later through state aid, but it it'll take us up to a month to get one in. So the the latest quote and we we put that 50,000 down because it was basically a thousand for kilowatt. But the last quote I got last week was it's about $59,500 now for 56 kilowatt generator on trailer.

And we don't currently have a generator on a trailer or we do. It's just smaller. We've got an 18 kilowatt okay generator. It it was under my assumption, yeah, that we were going to uh purchase a generator for the OAC to be permanent

uh because it was going to be named a shelter out there. Um that's um I believe it is wired that it can be hooked up. It just needs to be just need to purchase a generator. I think there what the director had indicated to me is that there is a generator that is already there and hooked up. We need to verify that.

Yeah. I thought I didn't know there was one out there or I thought we were going to be moving some around and using using one and putting it somewhere. Um was I what I if I remember right, we were going to be buying a new one and moving one and and kind of doing some juggling just a little bit. Yeah.

Well, our 18 kilowatt one was used by the sheriff before 25 years ago it was given to the emergency management office. because we had rented it for so long for the sheriff's office. So that generator is getting getting to be the point one of these days we're going to go out there to start it and it's just not going to going to go anywhere. I do feel we need a backup generator and um but yeah, I was on the assumption in if we needed to use the OEC as a shelter, we would because during the 2022 DO, we used our 18 kilowatt over at the East Fire Station for the EOC, but since then that's been rectified with the generator that we put out there. So, I don't know where this that the OAC's got a generator. So, we do do need to look into that one.

Yeah. I just know it was I know we I know about the hookups. Yep. I know. I know we I know we did the hookups because we thought we could be possibly rent one from a contractor and that was or bring my emergency management one down there if we had to. Correct. And Bob, I'm not sure on this uh Elton request if there's any grants out there for radios. I'm not you weren't here the the week that they came in and gave their presentation, but uh I'm not sure if there's any thing out there for

Well, each fire department can put in a grant for for the Homeland Security grant request, but uh I've got over 10 counties now on the eastern side to include Minihaha and Lincoln. Chances of us getting any money through Homeland Security is going to be slim this year. Okay. Okay. All right. Was there any other direction on the Elkton or just tell them to um apply for the for 2027 budget or what direction? I think they were probably looking for some answers sooner rather than later.

And they have I know when when they left we did task them with getting solid numbers in a in a And I have those. And you do have those? Yes.

I I think somewhat of Elton's what they presented was to um you know like our fire departments we haven't they have an annual budget that they put towards us. Uh I think they're kind of leaning towards that. Um you know their their need. Yeah. They have a need right now. Uh it's kind of this is the only area where we would be able to take the money out of. Uh but do we consider it at budget time or do we take the funds out of here?

And just to be clear, these funds are not set aside anywhere. These are part of your unassigned fund balance. Yeah.

This is not a separate fund anything. I mean, it's been just that long now that everything and and it never was. I mean, it was always I think we had maybe assigned some of it initially when we had some of those bigger projects, but now we haven't had anything now for a couple of years. So, it is just fund balance. So, you don't really need to stick to what you see in front of you. Um, it's kind of irrelevant, I think. Uh, I think it's just what what you want to do and when you want to do it. And historically the the commission projects funds have been for not for staffing and things and and payroll and things like that but more um structured.

Initially initially there was some of that money used for salaries

initially. Um after that it was for projects that were um I mean we we really concentrated on the emergency services as you can see. You know, I think all of the fire departments submitted some requests that were granted. We have done an um el we've done ambulance uh ambulances for Elkton and for White. Um you know, we did some of our like our long-term things again, things that were going to be um you know, long-term projects. We put some money for the the courthouse roof. Um some of the money was for a generator for this building to run this building. Uh um so yeah uh it's been used for a variety of things, but like I said, at this point it's just part of fund balance. So I guess right now it's just going to be a management decision on the commission's part on how you want to handle this type of request. if you want to handle it um and want to to give anything here off of the budget cycle that we're in. Um we would have to do the supplemental budget process or do you wait and ask them to submit a request for 2027 um budgets just like the fire departments do and like all other non-mandated entities do. Look, I'd like to see a request I mean a formal request that we could act on yet this year

to be but I mean what we've got so far is pretty general and we didn't know I mean they they weren't sure of what funding sources they had and didn't have during the presentation. That's that was what I gathered. I think it's definitely a worthwhile service that needs to be provided in that portion of the county. But yeah, I'd like to see a more formal request laid out that we can take action on. So, right now, we'd be guessing. Yeah. At what they need, but I I definitely think it's a it's a worthwhile thing to pursue and get get them some funding that this year if they need to. Yeah, I agree. Okay. All right. Any other discussion?

You said the total dollar amount was $6,500. $6,500 for the training piece because it was $500 per um member. So, it was $6,500 for their training expenses. And then the three radios that they're asking for was just over 16,000. But as Commissioner Post had mentioned, you know, they had then my understanding is that they have asked other entities for for assistance as well. And so maybe um like you said, a more formal request. What assistance have you um been able to get from other entities that you have reached out for? What exactly is the dollar amount that you're seeking? Um, and then something that we can more formally make a decision on rather than just taking, you know, they did they I mean these are good quotes, but um

something a little more formal on on your balance sheet here. You you have radio upgrades 129,000. Do you remember what that was? The highway. That was just the highway. All the highway radios that we upgraded back uh 2024. That didn't include any fire departments or anything like that. That was just highway.

Okay. I think if uh if they can if they can come back, it it would be great for them to I know I think they had mentioned about coming back with more formal things and and if they do have updated on their fundraising and that for a more formal ask, we could probably um accommodate that in an upcoming meeting. Yeah. Yeah. Total ask wasn't more than 22,000. Is that what I just said? 225, I believe. 225.

You know, we did we did the um the Bruce generator up there and we also did a city of Aurora, the pump there for the public water. So, it it wouldn't be out of line if they but they need to bring a request forward. Yeah. with a very specific dollar amount, you know, and and I think it would be fair to ask you what other fundraising efforts, you know, have you already been given. So, we don't need to double fund something, but I think it's worthwhile. They need to get that training and they need to get some radio so they can communicate and provide the service that's needed. Right.

Okay. Moving on. Number 10, Commission Department director's report.

All right. Um, as part of my report, I um in your packets, I included a couple of documents. One was the um the bylaws for the Brookings County Commission, including rules of procedure and policies, and then a code of conduct for commissioners, elected, appointed department heads, and then members of all of your boards, commissions, committees, task force, etc. Um, the commission has never had any formal bylaws or a location where all of these policies are kept. We know we have them and we refer to them as needed, but not one specific location where you can go to and find find those policies. Um, I really looked at Pennington County um had this bylaws document um and then that referenced this code of conduct. So um I I kind of used theirs and to create what I have created. Um you know if you wish to I gave them to you now basically just as for an opportunity to read through them. I don't there's no action or anything if we want to take formal action on these documents that would come as part of an agenda item at a later date. Um, I guess what I'm just asking for now is if it's something if you've had a chance to take a look at them, read through them, and if it's something that you want to put on a future agenda for um for discussion and possible action, I have shared these documents with um with with Dan Nelson um and he has said they're fine. So, but I didn't want to just give them to you without a giving you a chance to look at them over first. That's why I just kind of put them in the packet for discussion at this point.

Okay. Any other any discussion on that or direction for me? In your opinion, how's ours compared to Pennington County? We've very similar.

It's very similar. Yeah, very similar. Um, a lot of it in the bylaws is just referencing state statute and the policies or the the basically the governance that the commission has through statute. A lot of it is, some of it is not um, but it addresses in there all of the different policies that we have um, approved over the years and it's one place that we can continue to keep them and then update the the bylaws then as needed as well. Um, and then that code of conduct is just pretty pretty general. If you get a chance to read through, it's just pretty general conduct.

Any direction? Do you want to see this as an action item moving forward? What's consensus? I didn't get all the way through them yet, but no, I started, but it it got too late last night. Yeah, they are. I mean, they're not they're not terribly terribly lengthy, but that's why I wanted to give them give you a chance now to um put them in now just for discussion purposes so that you have a chance to look over them. Yeah, I think we as commissioners need to get them all read and go through them and then get back to you on next step. Okay.

And this would go in the personnel manual, correct? It would be a separate document from the personnel manual because this really direct is more of something bylaws for the the commission itself. Yeah. Yeah. The code of conduct does affect department heads and all of your like appointed committee members and things of that nature. Um, so that would need to be, you know, brought addressed with with each of those individuals if this were passed. But

does this document cover all elected officials or just the commission?

All well, the code of conduct um encompasses all appointed and elected department heads. The bylaws are specific for the county commission, but as if you read through them, like I said, a lot of it is just a lot of just kind of regurgitated state statute on powers of the board given statutoily. Um, there's a few other things that kind of speak to like how the agenda is laid out, for instance. So, I've, you know, do basically just kind of what we do and how we handle our agendas and and just basic basic procedures, but it's spelled out in these bylaws.

When I went through all that, I there was nothing in there that red flag for me or concerns or No, like we're following everything that's in there and I don't know, I don't have any concerns in that. I guess meeting. Okay. I suppose do you So, will you all individually then tell me if you're okay with me putting on them on the next agenda if once you've had a chance to look over them?

Okay. Um Dave, you've already given me your opinion, so you don't need to reach out to me. Okay. I see no concerns in there.

Okay. Um so the the boiler the HVAC boiler system project for the government center is underway. So if people hear a lot of banging and clanging, it's probably what it is. Um you can I part of my staff report kind of included a a general timeline of things. So right now the cooling system was being demolished. Um and again here uh cooling tower now we're kind of into March with the cooling tower demolition and expansion of the concrete pad. So some more demolition probably some more noise here in the upcoming days. Um, on Wednesday, April 8th, there's a tactical pipeline response training uh through the South Dakota Pipeline Association. That's at 11:30 at the Dakota Bank Center. I think each of you probably received um information individually and can register for that. Um, if you uh want to and want to attend, go ahead and register or if you need to, please reach out to me and I can uh track that down. The commission did receive a thank you from the museum as well that was included with my report. Um some upcoming dates I think is as highway superintendent Brian Gusted had mentioned today at 2:30 is the bid opening for the county asphalt and chip seal projects. Um that's actually going to be next door here in the community room this Saturday. Elkton the EMT training. I think when they were here a couple of weeks ago, you had asked about that training. Um it's at that lunch is at noon at the Elkton Community Center. That's this Saturday. Next Wednesday is the Baby Bell expansion groundbreaking ceremony. You would park at the Dali's Event Center. Um and then they're going to bus you

over to that groundbreaking uh site, the ceremony site. Um, next Thursday the 12th is the Brookings Public Library Board Meeting at 11:45 at the library. The Brookings and Moody County Lincoln Day dinner is the 20th of March, 5:00 at Club 71 at SDSU. In addition to the calendar, March 31st, I did receive notice that the Brookings Fire Department annual feed will be that Tuesday, March 31st, 5:30 social 6:30 meal, that's at their fire hall there on um 607 20th Avenue, right along 6th Street next to Burger King. Um, a couple of other things coming into April. We have the retirement party for finance officer Lorie Schultz scheduled for the 2nd of April, 3:00 to 5:00. It'll be here in the chambers. And then that same evening is the Taste of Brookings celebration um from 5:00 to 7:30 at Club 71. I will be getting some additional information and getting RSVPs for that. Um, we'll be closing at noon for Good Friday. On the 3rd, uh, April 8th is a Wednesday. That is our next 10 county meeting date. It is in Dismmet at noon on April 8th. Um, do you know if you plan to attend that, Kelly? Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. What's that? But I haven't made one yet. What? What? I said I haven't made one of those yet, so I should. Okay.

Okay. Starts at noon at D Smith and I'll get I'll be getting out the agenda and some additional um information on that. Um budget hearings. I would like to set a date for budget hearings. Um, looking at the week of June 22nd. I know we have um we have some people are going to be out uh early in mid June. So, um it'll be a little bit later, but I'd like to get just a date on the calendar for that. Is there a particular day? Okay. So, the the week of June 22nd,

only thing I have is on the 25th at noon. Okay. That week is open for me. That week's open for me, too. But if we just did it Tuesday the 23rd, we can kind of keep consistent with our stay with a Tuesday, that do an all day thing. If we get it on the calendar now, just put it on your calendar. I'll send out a meeting invite. Then it's on your calendars and you can't schedule anything around it. How's that sound? June 23rd. Okay. Start in the morning. Yes. Early. Yes. What's early for you? 8

8 a.m. It's usually what we start with budget hearings. Um, also even looking a little bit further out, but wanted you to know, um, the conservation district tour, they're looking at August 20th. I know that's quite a ways out yet, but they wanted to kind of get that too set in stone. Um, if you look at your calendars now and tell me that that doesn't work for um for you, I can let them know that, too. We're just trying to get a date on the on the calendar for that as well. I know that date that I have a research park and we have an LAPC meeting, but those are at 11 and noon. So,

okay. This usually wraps up Yeah. noonish. Well, it's usually between 8 and noon. Yeah. Should be fine. Should be fine. Okay. Anybody else have any strong aversion to that date? Otherwise, I'll let them know. Okay. Okay. Um, I think that's all I've got. All right. Unless you have any questions for me. I think so. State Attorney's Office report. Nothing to report.

All right. Um, so then we'll move into commissioner reports. Uh, Commissioner Vanderwal.

Thank you. On Saturday, February 21, I attended the legislative coffee here in Brookings for both uh districts 7 and 8. Uh I think five of the six were here that day. It was good interaction with our uh people who represent us in pier. On Monday, February 23rd, I had several interviews here at this building for WEDA supervisor. On Tuesday the 24th, I attended the DOT stakeholder meeting here at noon. And then on Thursday, uh, with many of the rest of you, on February 26, I attended the annual township meeting and the weed meeting in the afternoon. That's my report. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Post. Yes. On the 17th, right after our commission meeting, we had the bid opening for the weed department. And uh then on the 21st on that Saturday I was out in Pier representing our region at the state GOP meeting, central committee meeting. Um let's see on the 23rd we had interviews for the weed department head and on the 26th I was also at the township towns and township meeting and the weed board meeting that we had out there. So that is my report. Commissioner Miller.

All right. Thank you. On the 23rd, I had the board meeting that night at behavioral health. Uh they continue to uh amazing staff over there. They're doing really good things, but having some challenges with some funding changes federally. So, they're uh needing to address some changes and redirect there a little bit to keep going. On the 25th, I met with uh the president of the Humane Society. they're looking at doing a new building project and uh wanted to fill me in as what's happening with that. Also on the 25th uh the beta board meeting and again they're dealing with some funding changes federally. So made a vote that they're going to raise the fairs a dollar a ride there to try to offset some of the funding loss. Um then uh later in the afternoon, the uh Brookings Area Transportation Plan met here in this room. Um talking about some changes and what's happening there. It seems odd to be talking about changes in 2050. That sounds like a really feature, but I guess that's not that far away. On the 26th, attended the township and weedboard meeting with the rest. Um, yesterday I went and had a tour of the Humane Society in the building and talked with the director there and what they're doing and uh talked about some numbers and how they're funded and um didn't realize that that's a standalone nonprofit. That's not a city entity or anything. It's just a standalone. So interesting. A lot of animals go through there. And then also yesterday I had a meeting with um Eric from the the CEO of IAP. Um again discussing how that program works and all the different

tentacles that they have and the different ways that they impact the community. Um really enjoying that. There's a lot to learn there. So another board meeting with them tonight. So and that's my report.

All right. Thank you Commissioner Jensen. On the 21st, they attended the legislative update which was very informative. Thank you to our area um representatives and peer for what they do. On the 23rd, uh had a hospital board meeting. Um still learning there. Uh they went through some financials. Uh and also it was very interesting. uh uh had a a presentation on artificial intelligence out there and AI and and the possible ways that it can be used at the hospital and different uh different departments. Uh still still experimenting with that. On the 24th attended the Brookings Area Transportation Plan here in this building. Uh like Commissioner Miller said, it's interesting how many years out there uh looking in uh forecasting traffic counts and and such. On the 26 attended the towns and township meeting and also in the afternoon attended the weed meeting which uh I was impressed. It was well attended by township uh township personnel and thanks to all the staff that uh gave presentations there and uh attended.

All right. So on the 18th uh after our meeting uh that Wednesday, I ended up attending the United Way Stronger Together Suicide Prevention Forum uh that the United Way held out at the Dakota Bank Center. Uh it's uh something that I know uh assistant sheriff Bitler sits on and was a panelist on and uh we thank him for his service to those boards and that uh it's it really is uh eye opening uh knowing uh knowing the history on on that uh the amount of resources that come to work uh come together to work uh for uh our continued uh struggle with mental health in in our communities uh uh across Brookings County and across the uh we have a lot of a lot of very strong uh organizations that come together to help uh get people the assistance that they need and and the United Way does a great job of that. That afternoon I attended the Zoom a legislative update uh uh put on through the growth alliance uh some great information and and and they bring back uh every week uh information back from pier uh to us there on the 19th attended the research park uh board meeting and then that afternoon we had a growth alliance board meeting uh just moving forward uh they've uh put out a official will uh offer to one of our CEO candidates. Uh waiting for all of the information to come back so we can announce who that new CEO will be down the road. And then on the 21st uh the Growth Alliance uh public affairs committee attended that legislative coffee here with the district 7 and 8 legislators. Uh again, you know, more more information coming from Pier uh that really impacts us here in Brookings County. uh the more information the

better and and for us as county officials and that to be uh involved in that process is is very uh very beneficial for us in Brookings County. And that is my report. So moving on to number 13, executive session in accordance with South Dakota codified law 125-2 parentheses 1 and 4 for personnel and contract negotiations. I will look for a motion to enter into exact session. So move second motion a second and all in favor signify by saying I I post say nay. We are an exec.