County Commissioner & Board of Adjustment - Regular Meeting

This conference will now be recorded. Hello. Would you all like to join me for a prayer?

Dear Lord, thank you for the opportunity that we have to assemble today without fear of attack, and bless those that are protecting those rights for us. We pray for a thorough and respectful discussion today, and wise and well-thought-out decisions. And as we return, we also pray for safe travels as we return back to our homes and our lives.

Amen.

Would you like to join me in a pledge of pledge? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, I'd like to welcome everybody here today to the Lawrence County Commission on July 30th to order. Do you have before you the agendas? Is there any additions or corrections to the agenda? Second. Moved by Tisdale, seconded by Ewing to approve the agenda. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay. Okay, any conflicts today? None here. None here. No. You had a chance to look over the regular meeting minutes from July 14th. Moved and approved. Second. Moved by Tisdale, seconded by Comer to approve the meeting minutes from July 14th of the County Commission. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay. Okay, check them off. You also had a chance to review the bills. Do you have any questions on those?

No questions, just kind of the comment that the court system must be slow. We don't have all the attorney expenses and things we need to do. There is one spot in here. It's a fairly large bill, but I don't recommend the company, and I'm sure the rest of you can clarify that for me. Or the road? Yeah, road, Aztec Corporation.

That's the one who did the paving project.

Oh, okay, sure.

Nemo?

No, not Nemo.

Aztec, that would be the chip seal project. Oh, the chip seal. That's 14.

Oh, okay.

Thanks, John. Well, that's not cheap, is it? No. Okay, John, that was a fantastic job. And they did a fantastic job. Oh, yeah.

I'm good. Those are paid bills. And moved by Feigen, seconded by Fulmer to approve the bills as presented. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay. Okay, bills will be paid. So personnel requests.

Okay, I'm going to start with High Wave. I have a new hire for Skyler Maloney. He will be a light equipment operator, grade one. They pay a 30 to 35 full-time permanent employee effective on August 3rd. And then to the Sheriff's Office, I have a step raise for Leah Sanders. She is going to a Deputy I, Grade II, base pay at $32.37, full-time permanent employee, effective on August 9th. And then Troy Thompson, step raise, Sheriff's Office, Deputy II, Grade III, base pay at $35.02, full-time permanent employee, effective August 23rd. And then Janelle Gerberding, is a staff police, going as a physician's assistant, going into a grade three of a base pay of $3,740.38 per pay period. She is a half-time permanent employee, going to be effective on August 9th. And then James Moreau is a new hire, correction officer one, grade one, base pay of $2,080. He will be a part-time failing employee, effective July 30th.

Motion to approve. Second.

Moved by Comer, seconded by Ewing to approve all of the personnel requests and any questions or discussion. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, nay. Okay, motion carries.

Travel requests, any good accounts? I do, I have one. That's for Taylor Benson to travel to Salt Lake City, Utah for a Situational Leadership Course, September 1st through the 7th.

Second. Moved by Hinsdale Second Viewing to approve the Travel Requests for Cater Vincent. Do you know, Sheriff, why the decision to drive was made versus flying? I don't have a specific reference to that.

Okay, thank you.

All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay. Okay, motion carries. Raffle of Salt Lake.

Do we have any raffles? We do. We do. For your consideration, there's a raffle request from Deadwood History, Inc., for a drying on October 10th of, what's this, 2027. They're raffling off a motorcycle. commemorative 150th anniversary custom bike.

It was my understanding that they were going to conduct the raffle when the tickets were sold, but they didn't necessarily have an exact date. Yeah, I think they were trying to fund it too.

So they'll be looking for you not to object to the raffle. Motion to not object.

Is that allowed? To not have a sunset date on a raffle? I don't think there's any requirement to have a sunset date on a drawing date.

I don't know any reason why I got it.

There it is.

I think we had Ewing motion, did we have a second? I'll second. We have a motion by Ewing and a second by Comer to not object to the DHI raffle. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay. Okay. The surplus items?

Yes. I have the Sheriff's Office requesting to surplus some firearms. There's five firearms, so I just need a motion to allow that to be surplused, along with There was a vehicle that was purchased on a grant with the drug money, and that needs to be surplused so it can be returned.

I have one question. What do you do with the firearms? You surpluse them, but they sell them or they dispose of them?

Most circumstances, which would be the case this time, we're trading them for newer models. Okay. A way to keep current on where things are. You might remember, Commissioner, A couple of years back, we started a program where we were replacing our Glocks with Glocks that could accommodate different optics so that we could increase our scores. You and I had a specific conversation, well, why don't we just buy them all at once? And I said, we'll just do it over a period of time. It makes it easier to budget. So this is, we're getting close to the last of that process and it's definitely one of the new. Thank you, appreciate it.

Moved and approved. Second. Moved by Fisdell, seconded by Flanagan to approve the surplus of the items as presented. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. They will get surplus.

Mr. Chairman, as has been the custom for the last several years, Kevin McPherson is here with the auction company to ask you to request that parking ramp, the main floor of the parking ramp for county employees and state employees park be closed on Thursday and Friday, August 20th and 21st. And also I think 22nd is that on Saturday. With the proposed moving date on August 19th. So I think that's Wednesday after five o'clock after the employees leave that day. Yes. And Kevin is here. Mr. Chairman, if you might have some comments. Go ahead, Kevin.

Uh, I guess just kinda as for in the past, we've had a good working relationship with everyone in the garage. We realize it's very busy and very congested, but we try to do everything we can to keep things flowing there. And I think we've got along good with the sheriff and the police department. Um, Bruce, I don't know. We're a little bit up in the air. I've been making some calls to see if there was any possibility of a few of the vehicles that are parked here at the end of the parking garage. And what I would like to propose is if we could possibly find a different place to park those just to have a few more spaces. And I know there's been some calls this week, but I don't know if we got anything confirmed.

No. So Mr. Chairman, if I may, I think it was last year was the first year. Kevin brought up the idea. So I think it's on the east side of the ramp here to the south. We have all the county vehicles parked there. equalization, et cetera, right? I went out and counted the spots yesterday. I think there's an additional nine spots. I thought there were more, but I counted nine. There's one on our side on the end that the police department uses. And then on the other side, on the west side is where all the Deadwood Police Office park, right? So I think what Kevin is talking about would be occupying those additional nine spots that the county has as vehicles, if that makes sense to everybody.

If possible, and what I'd be willing to do if it's okay here with the commission is, continue to work with Bruce and see if we can help, uh, accommodate a safe place for those vehicles to be part of, because it seems to me like they don't get used a lot. And if it didn't, if it didn't mess things up, it would sure help us to have a few more spaces there.

Um, I talked to Tim and, and so what the issue is hail. So the vehicles are protected if they're in a ramp, obviously not if they're not right. And, uh, He would help facilitate moving the vehicles up to the public safety center in their parking lot there, again, but they wouldn't be covered. So I think what Kevin is talking about is something else, some covered parking for them. Right. And so that's the issue. And where else is there covered parking?

Well, I guess what I would propose is either working with the hotel, if we can, I guess my thought would be is realize that we want to keep those covered, you know, and if either with the hotel, possibly the city, or if I could arrange anything like down at the first goal or something, but if that would be a possibility.

Yeah, so I think we need to have them accessible to if we do need them also, because those are working days during the week. So if our employees do need to use the vehicle, we can't have them chasing.

We could probably put one vehicle on the sally port here, the old sheriff's office. There are some spaces behind the maintenance office over there as well, across the street. Covered? No, no.

And then, I mean, with the heat, you never know. We could get hail any second.

What's the need for the additional spots?

Just the fact that the auction just keeps growing and growing. Success in the event. We have a huge amount of vehicles coming. We try to keep it limited, but it's really hard to say no. Everybody in this room can understand that. The other side of that coin, it's more business for the city of Deadwood, Lawrence County. There's a lot of revenue generated off of this whole thing. There's several vehicles coming that are 100, 200,000. We're going to have one vehicle that could be 500,000 plus. So it's a big time deal. And we've got a lot of people coming from long ways away. So just want to try to do everything we can to try to accommodate

And Lawrence County doesn't directly benefit from any of these.

Well, in and around, there's sales tax and all of the other. Which we don't get anything out of.

Sheriff Dean? I just wanted to point out, Mr. Chairman, if I could, the one vehicle that should, by my recommendation, be off the block in terms of losing the space is the one that we have allotted that we're have over there, that particular Deadwood Police Department vehicle, that sort of arrangement between their chief and I that I made on behalf of Bruce, it has particularities to the vehicle and it needs to be in that spot for security reasons.

That's the one I referenced on the end. Yeah. Yeah, that has to be there. There has to be these spots. That would be number 10. Oh, okay. Yeah. Did you have another comment, Bruce? I was going to say, Kevin, are you guys competing with Mecham now, too, the famous auction company? Is that successful?

Well, one of the cars in particular, the one that I mentioned, Mecham has been working really hard to try to get that car. And a gentleman made the decision here a month or two ago that Todd and Kevin were going to be in charge of selling it here. And he likes Deadwood. He likes everything that takes place here. So it's not just a boost in the arm for us. It's the whole... People love coming here today. We get a lot of comments from people that they get a little tired of how busy it is down south in January. I see. And we have a lot of people that are buying here and trying to sell there. But many times they buy a little higher here than what they would like to is the way it's been working out. So we're all rolled here.

Director Ewing? I totally support what you're doing and always have. It's a benefit for sure. But I'm a little reluctant to take the chance of putting those county vehicles out in the weather. I mean, if we'd be having somewhat of a normal summer, we wouldn't, but this high heat and these storms come up, it could just be instant hail. And I just, I'd hate to see those vehicles getting beat up and the glass broken. Sure.

You mentioned the city and the hotel. Is there a possibility of having covered parking for these cars?

Well, I guess what I'm proposing, if it would be okay with the commission, if I could possibly work with Bruce and if we could make covered parking available for those vehicles and have it still there. I mean, I understand we don't want to have one here and one there. If we could get the eight or nine that would basically be in one location and possibly in working with the hotel, maybe we could just move them upstairs. So we'd have them together here. If it would work that I could work with Bruce to accommodate that.

Just to throw this out there too, it's worked out generally pretty well. And what the county does is we park at the top level of the ramp those days. So that's not covered parking up there. So I think you're talking about on the second level or somewhere else? Yeah, on the second level, so we'd get them covered up. Sure, yeah, I can work with the department heads to make sure if they need vehicles that are available that we can figure that out. Yeah. Kevin knows how to get to them. Yeah, yes.

Do we need a motion to that effect or not? Yes, please. So we're looking for a motion to possibly allow them to move in on the 19th, utilizing those nine extra spots and then closing the parking ramp that motion didn't include to have contingent upon getting those sub bots on the second floor uh if you want to limit it to just the second floor or you could do it to have it be covered parking lot that's easily accessible it works for your needs um right yeah i can figure it out yeah i'll make that motion

Do you remember what it was? I'll move in on the 19th to the 21st and to allow the additional nine parking spots as long as they're undercover.

One correction, you said the 21st or the 22nd is actually Saturday.

Does that include the spot the sheriff just said is pretty critical for? That one has to stay in there. That's the 10th spot.

Okay, I don't want to upset the sheriff. That's the part that made the decision. Sheriff, that's the parking vehicle, that's the one.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so that one will stay there. Okay.

Do we have a second? Okay, second.

Okay, it's been moved and reluctantly seconded by Ewing. Does everybody understand what the motion is? We'll allow them to move into those nine extra spots everything else on the 19th, as long as they can find covered parking that's easily accessible. All right, all those in favour of the motion, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay? Okay, motion passes. Thanks, Kevin. Okay, thank you for your time and we'll be in touch.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right, Black Hills National Forest stage two fire restrictions. We have an ordinance before us. Insurance policy.

I think you all have a copy of the proposed fire ban. This came because the Black Hills National Forest has set their fire restriction ban in place stage two. The only thing that it does not cover when it goes to stage three, it will restrict the ATVs from the trails. So we're not there yet for stage two. Everything that I've listed and written with Bruce, mirrors, what these four services all put in place. This will affect the entire county. It will shut down campfires, explosives. It's all listed. Smoking, except in the vehicle. Chainsaws without a spark arrestor and so forth. Welding. If you're off-road with an ATV, you can get off the trail, but it has to be in a place where there's no burnables, like a gravel park, et cetera. After talking with the local firefighters, fire chiefs, even we had a meeting on Monday with South Dakota DOT, John Bay, Wildland Fire, U.S. Forest Service was online. They all felt like it was well needed, and this would have to be put in place. Bruce has got it as a resolution, correct? And it would have to be taken off by the commission as well.

It's done in the past, yeah. Does this only apply to stage two, or does it move, take the next category up and figure out stage three?

It just covers what's written right here.

I don't think it gets that dependent on necessarily what the Forest Service is doing, but that was an instigator, I think, for Paul bringing it to because they did make that change.

Even if they went to stage three, it wouldn't really affect the county that much because most of it, I would say all trails are up in the National Forest. The state lands as well.

So you don't think we need to have an amendment to the ordinance if we went to stage three? I don't think so.

They pretty much got that covered. I did hear that the Forest Service is informing all their campground hosts. They're putting up posters. They're even putting a little flag in the campfires that are established with a note on it.

No campfires. Yep, Bruce. John Bay has a sign and Paul, there's an example of that on the board. I think Paul will talk to you about signage as well.

Yeah, we have, John has 11 of these. I've actually identified like 20, 22 places where these should go. So I may end up, John has talked to Franklin County and they've agreed to make more signs at their cost with plus labor parts if we need them.

I think the DOT has agreed to allow us to put our signs on their posts as well.

Yeah, and I did talk to Mike Carlson yesterday about the interstate. He said, we don't put them on the interstate. People are just going through and coming back. We don't worry about them. We just put them on the state highways. You do have, Mr. Chairman, you have two digital signs. You plan to deploy high visibility areas. Yeah, John and the highway department stores and uses the two electronic signs that emergency management has. And I think... I've got a place at Elkhorn Ridge along the road there. And I can't remember where they are. 35? Could be on 35. There's numerous places where you could put that. It may be down emo areas, pretty congested for campgrounds. So a lot of motorcycles down there might be a good place for it. Oh, yes, Barb.

Just on the digital board signs, I did notice, and I don't know whose sign it is, right, as you're leaving lead by, I think, by Jacob's Welding, somebody does have a sign there that's already up. It says, like, prior dangers, high use caution. So that's, I don't know whose sign it is.

That is the state DOT, and I talked to Mike yesterday about that, and he said they would be changing that for the rally, and those are not available. fire restrictive signs because they use those for traffic signs for the route. And even the big ones along the interstate, if we had something happen, they want to be able to put it up right away. So they wouldn't do that either. That makes sense. Go ahead and start over.

John, did you say the county has some blanks that we can use or something like that?

They have the capability of making their own signs and they've agreed that they would they would make us some signs to fill in whatever we need. The entire sign. And they would just do it at the cost. To order signs, to order them from our suppliers, it's like two to three months. We can do special orders and we can get it quicker, but quite expensive.

You pay a premium for that. So there's been great cooperation amongst counties, the federal and state, all to come put that together. Make sure people are communicating.

You know, Whitewood had a fire call the other day, north of the interstate even, and the fire index was moderate and they couldn't touch them, even though, you know, the next day is going to be high and the ashes are going to blow around and it's going to start a fire. I think it's just time to shut it down. Yep.

So we're looking for a motion to authorize the chairman to sign the resolution.

So moved. Second. Moved by Yuen, seconded by Comer. Do you authorize the chairman to sign the resolution 2026-19, any further discussion or questions? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay. Okay, motion carries. Thank you. We'll sign the resolution. Thanks for bringing that forward.

And to address Mr. Tisdale's question about automatic. That'd be nice to have that to work on.

Yep, thank you. Automatically follow up on our service there so we don't have to wait for a meeting. The only other thing left up there on general business is just to note that the SDACC Commission, September 15th and 16th, hopefully everybody's let Brenda know if you're planning on going. Otherwise, I probably won't put it on the agenda. Okay. Thank you. Okay, that moves us on to the sheriff's report. Sheriff Dean. Hey, good morning. Good morning.

I'm happy to report that where we are right now in terms of our revenue stream on the Public Safety and Services Center is 1,386,620 for the year. July will prove to be our highest month It's a projection at this point because we still have a day left, but I feel pretty confident we will be just north of a quarter million dollars for the month. In an effort to be as transparent and accurate as I can, I'll tell you with the rally coming up, that number will either go up, it'll go down, or it'll stay the same. Outside of that. To be exact. It's a good projection. as more of a foreshadowing than anything else. At our budget time, it's my intent to cover primarily the details of the PSAP consolidation discussions that we were having with Spearfish. There's a lot involved to it, not the least of which is a couple of different MOUs that Dr. Alka has been working on with me as well as the city of Spearfish. And I'm going to ask for something that is a little unique in that at that time, we're going to need some kind of a commitment vote from the county in order to proceed. There's two governmental entities to come together with some MOUs that we're still working on. It's not normal. in lieu of having those signatures in place, but the reality is we've got a tremendous amount of work to do if we're going to have a go-live date on January 1st of 2027, and we need to get down to the business of actually making this happen. And so I don't perceive that to be a problem. I think our MOUs are already very close. I met just yesterday with the city attorney and the mayor and their finance people.

We've gone over the numbers a number of times,

There'll be much more detail to come, but that's kind of what we could expect at one time.

So I think what you're referring to is later on at your meeting, you're having your continued budget discussions and he has an appointment around 11 o'clock or so with John Bay and some others. So that's for those who don't understand that, that's when you plan to talk more about this. Those agreements are referenced during your time here, but you're going to put that off until then. Correct. Okay.

That's all I have for you now. Let's hear something from you.

We can move on to canvassing the governor runoff election. If anybody was aware, we had a runoff election on Tuesday and we heard something about it.

Go ahead and get started. Should have the sheet in front of you. We do, we do. It should have been sitting in front of your... Oh, you do. I thought you were still looking for it. My bad. Anyway, so I'll read the results from the tabulator. And this is what was in... It's sitting by the desk.

It's in your general business file.

We'll start with the absentee precinct, Doden 308, Roden 994. Precinct 1, 83, or Doden 83 and Roden 253. Precinct 2, Doden 86, Roden 235. Precinct 3, Doden 145, Roden 374. Precinct 4, Doden 79, Roden 161. Precinct 5, Doden 25, Roden 75. Precinct 6, 29, Roden 45. Precinct 7, Doden 142, Roden 220. Precinct 8, Doden 23, Roden 48. Precinct 9, Doden 150, Roden 238. Precinct 10, Doden 224 and Roden 456. Chairman, that concludes the canvas of the July 28th, 2026 runoff election.

Move to approve. Second. Moved by Fonagan, seconded by Tisdale to approve the canvassing of the July 28th governor runoff election. I'll have to sign. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay.

Thank you. Chairman, if I may. This, again, everything went very, very well. And thank you to my team. I can't do it without them. The election workers, all of my coworkers, they are, you know, I call them, can you run this? They are in the Sheriff's Office. Bruce, Tim, his team, everybody just, you know, is so accommodating. And also for your guys' support, as always.

Wow. They put in probably at least a 16-hour day that day. It's a long day. They're here at, what, 5 and went home about 9.30 or so. I mean, it's a long day.

It is. It was good. And the cost to the county, you have a figure on that? I do not at this time. How about water turnout?

35%. That's pretty good. Yep, and it was just about 40 overall, I think, in the state. I remember seeing that correctly. They'll hand us their votes on Tuesday. And then also, Chairman, I'm going to defer to Bruce. Typically, on a primary election and a general election, you are required to hold a post-election audit after review with legal and the Secretary of States, we're going to not hold one. And I will refer to Bruce if he has anything else to say, but at this time we will not be conducting one.

Mr. Chairman, I agree with what Brenda said, and that's my recommendation. We're following guidance to include that from the Secretary of State's office. And they would explain that the governor's race is a continuation of the primary election. you have already conducted a post-election audit for that primary election. So there's no need to do another one. Does that make sense to everybody? We've also consulted some other very knowledgeable people, and we're all in agreement that the post-election audit, that requirement has been complied with, but it's not necessary. And the other thing is that if we were to get into those ballot boxes, potentially that's a felony to open those ballot boxes without a court order or something more specific than what we have. Does that make sense to everybody? So unless and until we would be directed to open those up, we will not get into it. Well, we're allowed to do that in the primary. They've been sealed now. Yeah, we just can't get back into it again. Okay.

So, sorry, Chairman, if I may, just a little more explanation on that. So once they leave and they go to the back room, once you pick that precinct, then we can break that seal on that. but until you put that precinct, we can't, when we can do a post-election audit. So since we're not doing one, those mailboxes have been sealed. I'm curious, so when can you open them up? 22 months. 22 months, wow.

Then they can be disposed of, right?

Yeah, then we call in the shredder and the shredder guy disposes of them at that time. They're under lock and key, basically. Thank you all very much.

That's all I have. That's you. Before we get to go on, let's have Mr. Bay. We need a break real quick. We'll take a break after Mr. Bay then. Yeah, get us back in. Mr. Bay with the Highway Superintendent Report. Good morning.

I don't have a lot today. First of all, our personal request that you guys approved earlier. I appreciate that. Thank you for that. We have a new guy we'll be starting on Monday. We do have a resolution I'm asking for your approval of and your support. That is Resolution 26-20, and that is going to be a resolution in support of South Dakota Association of County Highway Superintendents going forward with some legislation or some amendments to SB1 to try to increase the funding to the big program, which is our Bridge Improvement Grant The program was initiated in 2015. The first grants were awarded in 2016. The funding is set. It's never had a cost of inflation added to it since its inception. And I think we can all understand and agree that the cost of supplies, building materials, the cost of labor to replace bridges has increased significantly. So we're simply asking for this. a resolution in support of that. Minnehaha County has already done so. Pennington, it'll be going through to their meeting at the next meeting. And our president of our association is the Pennington County Highway Superintendent. He's going to be presenting this to the board, and it'll go to the South Dakota Association County Commission, at which point, we'll hopefully find some legislator to handle it from there.

Do you remember off the top of your head what that amount is that they put into that fund right now?

Right now it's $15 million combined. That includes license plate fees. That includes some wheel tax fees that is generated by counties. And then there's an amount that is put in by the state, a matching amount that is made up of some federal highway funds and things like that. Now there's a new bill out there for federal highway funds that is going to – to deal with this on a different level. I guess our goal here is to not replace the state's funds with that federal bill. We don't want to leave it the same, we're trying to increase it. Our goal is to try to, we would like to see it over the next three or four years, we're trying to double the size of that grant fund. This year we had 57 applicants for bridges in the state, 10 were awarded. I'm sure I've told you this in the past, but one bridge that was applied for was a $7.9 million bridge, one bridge. That would take up half the fund, you know, if that bridge would have been awarded. 10 applicants were awarded grants this year, but if that one bridge would have been awarded, it would have cut that drastically. Yeah.

Commissioner Ewing, do you have questions? No, I just, I would make a motion to follow the highway superintendent's recommendation to go ahead and do this resolution. Second.

Moved by Ewing, seconded by Flanagan to approve or to adopt the resolution 2026-20. I just add that Lawrence County has benefited greatly through the big program and being able to continue that and keep up with the costs. I would think that So bridge costs have almost doubled since 2015.

The state DOT has provided us with some of their data and it's 400% increase since 2015. Really? 400%. So that's trying to do a lot with the same money.

Absolutely. All right, any further discussion? All those in favor of adoption resolution, say aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. Okay.

Also bring to your attention the Nemo paving project. That phase four of that is, when I sent this out, it was, they had just started, they completed that. We're expecting that to be striped either today or tomorrow, and that is completely done. So, Wester was the contractor on that project. They came and they got it done pretty quick. They did a nice job. I haven't been out there since it finished, so I can't give you a full report on how good it is, If there are any issues, I will be out there hopefully later today. It is done, and our goal was to have it done by the rally, and they're going to meet that goal. Is this the final phase, or is there one? No, there's one more. One more. Yeah, we were doing this in five phases. With the possibility of the sixth section for that, we have that one area by the creek that we're not sure what that's going to cost yet. They're working on that now, so hopefully we're going to incorporate that in the last phase. Okay. Yeah, if it's not, if it becomes too much, you know, we're going to have to do that on its own. It'll actually, in essence, add a sixth base to that. We'll see. We do have, continued from the last meeting, the City of Spearfish up flat. I think we have representatives here from the city. We have representatives here from the developers. So if you remember, this is, Rory Maynard's development off of the Maitland Road. They're looking for some jurisdiction type, I guess, authority signatures on the plat. We've had some questions. I guess everybody can kind of give their side of it. I did speak with the state. Me and Bruce have been out there and reviewed the site. The road that is is in place now. I guess I was a little confused at the last time. The road that's in place is not on the section line at this time. It's being requested that it be moved to the section line, which is some inherent kind of issues that come with that, being on the section line.

Mr.

Chair?

The photo up there, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, so the section line, this pole here, I think is more or less the middle of the section line and these poles are on roy's property they were moved out of the section line right and then this is the erupted road that he has that essentially i think parallels the section like just for your reference um that's what that depicts i have listed a couple of you know the options that i can think of that you know that we could consider and that would be to approve approve the

the road on the section line as what the city is requesting of the developer. And then we just assume whatever consequences come from that, if any. I mean, it may be a problem 10 years down the road, it might be a problem tomorrow, I don't know. Who knows? You know, state statute says that it's a public road and it doesn't say it's a county public road, but I guess it's implied that it's a county road. We're in charge of section line roads, for a simple explanation. For us to enter agreement with a private individual or a development, we can't do that. If it was a road district or a city or a township, we can enter into agreements for who can maintain or who can take responsibility for those section line roads. There is no mechanism for us to do that with just a developer or private developer or a homeowner's association. We're not allowed to do that. There's also state statute that doesn't allow us to give a section line road, force it upon anybody. We can't do that either. I guess it'll look, really the only options we have, I guess, are either to approve it as is, you know, as presented, come up with some sort of a deal, maybe ask for a road district to be formed or don't allow the section line road and then just don't object to where the road is now. So those to me are the options that are available.

Okay. Administrator? The intersection that's proposed, you want to talk about that? You're aware of that?

I do have that. after this, because I believe that that intersection, no matter what we do here, I think we have to do something with that intersection, whether this road is approved, whether this development is approved or not. We have an issue with this intersection. We're going to have to do something. Whether it's a four-way intersection or a three-way intersection, there's a problem just because of the amount of traffic on that road. It's increased significantly. It's no longer servicing just a couple hundred cars a day rural county road services. I think our last, the last DOT count on that road at the Colorado Boulevard intersection is 2,183 cars a day. It's becoming a very busy area. I would just leave this open to whoever's got anything better to say. Peter or Jermia, do you have anything to add to this?

I can speak briefly to just the city subdivision process. This flat was originally proposed as a preliminary flat. That review process does include the county staff. That was back in October. There were a couple of associated variances that were requested by the applicant here that varied the ETJ subdivision road standards in minimal ways to account for the topography. and to request a slightly more narrow road than what our master transportation plan would otherwise require in this case. It shows the extension of Centennial Road to connect with Maitland as a future arterial, which is possible down the road, but at this time we didn't feel was absolutely necessary. So we did work with the applicant on that, and then it came back as a final plot on April 7th. At that time, the road was shifted slightly to the north, which did not conform to what was proposed in the preliminary plat. The applicant did come back with revisions to the plat, showing it aligned on the section line, which is what the city was comfortable with. And again, it's what was proposed in the preliminary plat stage as well. We feel the important piece here is the connection with Centennial Road in the future so that we can have another east-west road that would parallel Colorado Boulevard and potentially Aspen Road in the future as other properties develop between this road and Colorado Boulevard. I'll pause there and just ask if there's any questions.

If they were to

If they were to just go ahead with the road as it's put in, with it adjoining to the east of the right-of-way section line, does that not cover us for future growth that tie into the section line at that point? And doesn't that still accomplish what the city wants, but yet gets the county out of a mess right now for controlling it or maintaining any part of it, a private person maintaining on the section line, wouldn't that all work for both sites? Just put the road right where it's at, and we're joining the section line. So in the future, provided you get the rest of that, which will be quite a project, it could tie in.

It's possible, right? It may have to then jog back to the south to line up with September.

Yeah, which, deadline, future date, whatever, yeah.

I don't know if the way that it's constructed in this photo is outside of what's shown on the plat itself or the right of way, because it is publicly dedicated, which is what our subdivision code requires. So if the road were not within that publicly dedicated right of way, we'd have to look at a change to the plat, which is not out of the realm of possibilities, but we'd have to go back to our Planning Commission and Council and request that change. The other piece here on the road maintenance, the subdivision ordinance does require either a road maintenance agreement, which the HOA would be responsible for maintaining the road, or a road district. It does differentiate between the level of density as to which one of those is required. In this case, for the code, it does allow for a maintenance agreement. Although we understand the county may have concerns with that and would defer to the applicant on whether a road district is something they consider.

The only thing I would add is obviously the city and the county should likely look at this road alignment as a future material road. It's not just a local road accessing 10 plus or minus lots, which quite frankly, granted it will generate some traffic, traffic at that intersection with Maitland, obviously the impact of this project is proportionally minimal, right? From an engineering design standpoint, it's better to have that intersection, right? There's some great issues to go straight. Then you have offsetting intersections. So having a four-way intersection, I think, would be a better alternative as designed right now. But ultimately, right, we have to look at if the road is shifted, And this project would need to dedicate additional right-of-way to accommodate that alignment. Properties to the south develop themselves. Then there's a question of equitable dedication of rights-of-way. This property bears the entire, almost a majority of an arterial right-of-way. So hence that was the, concept and then quite frankly, the master transportation plan refers to arterial roads to generally follow section lines. We'll be able to recognize the county's position, but the intent was really to make this starting of the East-West connectivity for that. So that's kind of where we are, but we'll let the applicant speak The district and what they can do at this point.

Mr. Diver, do you want to speak? I wanted to speak to this just generally. The way it's planned now, the road would be in the section line, which is under your auspices, but the three mile ordinance requires that the right of way cannot be in the acreage of a lot. So the right of way becomes an independent parcel and it's not deeded to anybody. To limit the county's liability on this and questions, if that parcel was deeded to the city, you would limit your liability. Because it's got a separate parcel number and it's not deeded to anybody. It's just dedicated to the public. And if that right away was dedicated to the city, it would limit your liability if it was deeded to them.

You're saying the section line deeded to the city?

Typically on a plaque in the city of Spearfish. you do not include the right-of-way in the plat, so it becomes a separate parcel. That's what it's commonly called from the state. And it's not deeded to anybody, it's just dedicated on the plat. But if you follow that up with a deed in the city, then you would have less liability, because that ground is deeded, section line or no section.

Along with the seven for the national right-of-way. I know some of you we've talked about it.

But the county doesn't know it

would the city be willing to do that would the city take that needed portion of property they've got a 17-foot additional easement along maitland road that the county also will that they need to take over as well i don't know if we're prepared to make that decision here today like that would solve everything now that would solve all this

an applicant have anything to add but um i didn't know about this appreciate your name please yeah i'm sorry brewery mayor um spirit yourself and your address too please 1920 bermuda spirit yourself that's right um i mean i didn't know about this but i i'm here hoping today that we just can come to a resolution between us the city you guys and then we can get these on the market so i think we go into wintertime and we push this three four meetings and uh we know how land gets stagnant here. It's been quite the process already. I don't want you guys to take any more liability. I'm not asking that. I would love for it to be approved. I maintain this road. There's legalities against it. I'd move it to the section line so that lines up matches with the city. I'm really at your mercy and their mercy, but I just don't want to go like 60, 90 more days of meetings. Every meeting can change based on information and But we find out, that's where I'm at, so.

What are your thoughts on a road district?

I would, so I know about road districts. I was part of a road district at Shirttail Gulch. It was a very interesting road district. I don't have any problem with road districts. There was 33 lots there. I didn't feel that eight lots on a cul-de-sac needed a road district, or if we included the two that were essentially on Maitland Road, would be part of that road district. That's going to be 10 lots. the density was high enough to do one, but if it's a suggestion of a road district is what I need to do, then I'll do it. It would be great to someday, you know, have a road district and pave that entire road. I think, you know, I mean, these are the things that I think about. So I don't have a problem with road district.

I think it should. As Brenda points out, I think Rory could, at this point, because he has so many lots, could form the road district on his own. And this solves all problems. Only party evolves. Well, I don't know. I would say, My opinion, it'd be better if the road were where it's roughed in now from the county's perspective. If there's a road district formed in the section and the roads put in the section line, and I think as John Bay alluded to earlier, that's a road district is a governmental entity of the state. And we would kind of contract with them possibly to be the governmental entity in charge of the snow removal and so forth. So that opens the door for that happening in other places as well. I don't know if that's a good idea. I don't know of any other example where we've done that. And then you're beholden upon somebody else to make sure that that road is properly maintained and still removal. I mean, you probably want to try to have a whole harmless agreement that they're primarily responsible if there's ever an accident or anything, but it's not our folks out there doing it. Does that make sense? And that would be the downside to that.

Yeah.

Commissioner Flanagan.

Well, just not to convolute, but it's going to road district and own property.

So any deeded property that would be the road, include the road, would still have to be the county or the city. That's right. But that's another discussion. I get it.

I think, and city folks can correct me if I'm wrong, I think state law contemplates that when roads are dedicated, that there's this sort of acceptance. So in this case, the city is actually signing the plat The county's role in this would be to sign as highway authority. So state law requires that for every plat in order to be recorded, that there be some kind of approval of a highway authority. It doesn't necessarily have to be on a plat, but I think it has to be in writing. We've incorporated in our ordinance that there's a signature block on the plat. So that's ultimately, I think what we're here today is to get John or somebody to sign as highway authority, right? But to go back, I think what state law contemplates is when a plat is approved by the city, and they're accepting the grant of a road, for example, that is held in trust by the entity until such time as they need it. Does that make sense to everybody? Does that comport with your understanding? So just to give you an overview of, I think, how that works out. And so...

If there is a road district form, then the road district can sign as road authority.

That's right. Yeah.

Well, and I'll tell you, so just I'll tell you my cold two cents is that maybe the fastest route is to approve a section line, have me move the road over for that little piece. And you guys know that there's some liability there for the county. And I don't, I'm not asking that. That just seems like that's the fastest way. The second one would be to allow an easement, put the road where it sits now. And when the city comes through and wants to build a bigger road to access back to the east, they have the land dedicated to do it, they can do it. So it's like a temporary, I mean, and those lot sales that are along that, you know, major, massive devotional land know that someday there's going to be, could be a larger road there. So those are the two options that I would consider. Sorry, Luis.

Yeah, it sounded to me like you guys are open to the idea of what I heard of the road to be put where it's been roughed in, if that's the case, when does the city meet again? Or what would be the process for that to take place? Keeping in mind, Rory sort of got kind of a compressed timeframe here. Is that fair?

Yeah, that's a great question. So correct me if I'm wrong, I wasn't part of the preliminary process, but the city approved a preliminary plan for the section line road with the expectation that the road will be built somewhere in the center. So when this went through the final plan, with sort of the road being built when it was originally built, Planning Commission actually not approved the final plan unless it met the conditions of the preliminary plan. So it might solve county issue but then it creates a city process issue where the final plan is not compliant with the preliminary plan conditions.

Could they come in with a preliminary and final at the same time as amended?

Yes. To kind of expedite the process? Yes. Yes. Assuming our planning commission and city council too, right? And city council approve a new road. And that's the staff, you know, I guess, you know, and that's okay. The county required the road to be moved or the rights and easements to be moved. Why? So by you approving something today, may create a city process issue. And that kind of affects the whole ETJ discussion, which I know you're all probably thinking that right now. But yeah, so from our perspective, if the district is required, I think that's a solution that would not require any further action by the city. Because we do have a final plat already designed. Platted, well not platted, but you know, the final miler's done.

So the district gives us protection.

More protection as long as they have insurance. Next question.

Commissioner Flanagan. What you're requiring them to do is dedicate half a road right away on the section line and you've got no fewer than two Southern property owners that you would have to convince to give you land or condemn it to actually build an actual road along that Southern end. Rory is going to give you the access so you can build the road regardless of whether the Southern properties would allow it or not. I just don't see that that makes any sense at all. Because again, you got half of the road right away, you're acquiring the plot, which then assumes that you're going to pull it from the other properties on the South side of the section From this plot, that's what it shows. Or you're going to take it because it's section line road, but you're not going to get all your easement on that side because you can't add 17 feet to the condemnation that I'm aware of. But if he moves it up there and gives you the whole easement, I'm just so confused on how this ended up here.

But three mile and requiring additional right of way and stuff is just whatever.

I don't know. I just want to get this out of our hair. I don't think there's anything I'm not going to say wrong. I'll say extra legal or procedurally. This is one of those Richard Sleet bigger discussion things. And unfortunately, like we've had in the past, somebody stuck right in the middle of it between common sense and requirement of some ordinance stuff. It just doesn't make any sense to me. I'm going to make a motion to approve this with the very specific language that we don't own that right away. We'll never own that right away. The city needs to take over the additional stuff they're requiring in the right of way. And if or not, if we don't object, if we have any authority to do, to approve this. Just a second. So, and I'd really encourage in the future, since I'm a short timer, again, engineering and common sense says you've got half the road here. You can never build the other half of that road until you condemn or talk these people themselves to give it up. And he was going to give you that whole section, then it's done. But anyway, that's my motion.

Okay. Brandon, so your motion is to authorize the highway superintendent to sign as road authority. Yep. If we have any authority to do so.

Okay, yep. You specifically do not take any of the platting additions to any road right-of-ways required by the City of Spiritfish.

So if the road is constructed in the section line, then are we going to require later on the same agreement that we've required in the past for the section line agreement off the Crixinger Road, for example? Right. So that would have to come before you at a different time. Don't have that prepared. May I ask another question? Yes. Not to belabor the debate, but I guess what I fundamentally don't understand is, so the city's policy is that the road should be in the section line, This road is roughed in, it parallels the section line. I guess what I haven't heard explained is why, what difference does it make? Yeah, I think if it has to tie in at some point, it can. I think the same challenges that the county has, the city could, or if we can answer them, the city could as well. So that existing road or the roughed in road could be publicly dedicated, it could be an easement, that could be worked out. Sort of a similar challenge that the county has. The city could require a maintenance agreement being in place. that somebody else is maintaining it, either a row district or somebody else until such time as the city takes it on. So I think what I'm trying to say is the same challenges the county has, or the same ability to solve this, I think the city has. And again, you guys are the decision makers, but that's what I'm struggling with here to try to understand why you're going to take on the responsibility potentially for it in the section line. I realize Rory's in a tough spot here.

So part of Commissioner Flanagan's motion was that the county would never take over responsibility of that row. Is that legal to have that? So do we have legal standing to never take over that road?

Well, I think we do. So allow me. There's a statute, I think it's 11312, that says in part that any approving authority does not necessarily take on responsibility for a road by merely approving a plaque. And we lost a case in the Supreme Court. It wasn't a section line case. And we used that as our defense. And it was not a county road. It was a Forest Service road. But the Supreme Court said, it's your road. So we've always been very reluctant about roads. So what we did is after that decision, we started requiring that language from 11312 to be on a plaques. So that sort of conveys your intention that you're aware of this. You're not going to ever try to take that on. Does that make sense? I don't know how effective that's going to be. The Supreme Court didn't even put the brakes on when they rolled over that statute. They didn't even address it. It was a non-issue. And so I think it's right that, so a section line right now, you and I could all go out, we could all go out there and drive on it. It's publicly dedicated, 66 feet. But then when you start to, quote unquote, improve a section line is when things start to get a little more interesting. I don't think improvement necessarily puts down the county system, but it's that incremental creep of improvements and things that make it harder to say it's not a county road. Does that make sense? There's a lot more academic discussion that we're just going to be kind of going through. Yeah, I'm sorry.

That I'd love to talk about, but it's like.

I'm sorry. I'm going to call the question. But that's the reason why this is so complicated for me. I'll call the question.

So just one other question. I just called the question. I can ask another question. The part of the road where it comes off the section line and goes to the north, was that on the original city plat? Was that on the preliminary plat or not?

Yes.

Okay, that's my only question, thank you. All right, so the motion before us is that we do not object to the best of our authority that we allow the road as long as we don't ever have to take possession or maintenance of the road. Did I capture that motion correctly?

That was an AI summary. of what I sort of .

That's why I was checking the accuracy. Can I give it a try? Yeah. I think, so the idea is that to the extent the county has any ability to do so, if any, you're authorizing a highway superintendent to sign the plat as highway authority, and citing probably 11.312, the county has no present, future intent to ever add that road to its county system to improve it, maintain it, or do anything with it. It's being merely done for purposes of facilitating the plat. And then also you would require that future agreement to be signed for the section line.

Okay. Mr. Chair?

Yes.

Is that agreement a road maintenance agreement or a separate agreement between the developer and the county?

That's a, Mr. Chairman, and John will correct me if I'm wrong, what that does is allows the road to be put into county specifications. And then what we would do, and this is an interesting point, is we would probably sign it as no maintenance or minimum maintenance. And so then there's that issue as well that I didn't bring up until now. And John will correct me if I'm wrong. So theoretically, unless there's a road district, we would not probably authorize anybody to do anything with that road. We wouldn't be able to authorize anybody to do anything with that road.

I would recommend that we designate it as a no-maintenance road under 31-1248. All we have to do is remove any manmade objects that ever obstruct or... State law requires that. Yeah. No one would ever have to do anything to the surface? We'd never have to do anything to that road other than keep it open from any manmade objects. Okay.

So everybody understand where we're at then?

Very good.

Okay, all those in favour say aye. Aye. Any opposed nay? Okay, motion carries. So at your next meeting, we'll probably present that agreement to improve section line.

So now that we've talked about the doorway step. Well, I did reach out to the city earlier. I did finally get a call back and they would like to sit down and have a meeting. I would need a couple of, I'd like a couple of commissioners involved in that. Also like Bruce involved in that. I think the city's going to have their engineer, their attorneys, and I guess the mayor, because he's kind of the interim board's director, administrator. But just to kind of hash out something, what's going to, the mechanism going forward to take some of these roads or to, to kind of speed this process up. You know, when we got these ETJ roads that are going to be a problem, you know, what we may be able to do. So I'm just looking for maybe a couple of people would volunteer for that. And we set up some time for a meeting. So I'll volunteer.

I got two hats here, but I'll volunteer. Thank you, Greg. We were having good, fruitful meetings with the city here a while back, and I thought we were gaining some ground on a lot of these issues.

We haven't had it for a while. No, we haven't.

Yeah, absolutely. It was very fruitful, I thought.

And that would bring us to the other deal, the Maitland Road, the McDermott intersection. With this construction of this, it turns it now essentially into a four-way intersection. But again, like I just said earlier, even as a three-way intersection, the amount of traffic on that road now has become a real problem. It is no longer functioning as a rural road with just a few hundred cars a day. It's got a lot of cars. There's a lot of development, not just city development either. I'm not putting this all on the city. There's a lot of development up the road. to the south there that's county development in there. You got the Talon Road, the Eagle Bridge development or whatever it's called. You got just all through the main road. It's become quite a thoroughfare. I'm recommending that we do some reconstruction of that intersection and turn it into an all-way stop. I'm just looking for a motion and approval from you guys to do that. So moved. I'll second, yeah.

So I'm going to move my flag in second by Tisdale to change that to an all-way stop. You said some new construction.

That sounds like more than just picking up the stop sign. Well, that curb, the inside curb on there, it would be very similar to what we had to do on the Crook City Road. You know, the curb is built for a super because it's a through road. We have to remove that curve. We'll have to turn that into a squared up. Squared up the corners. Yeah, you got to get it squared up or people will just continue to run the curve. This inside curve. Where that driveway is. Where that driveway is. We're going to have to redesign that whole area. But you can do that in-house.

We did. Yeah. We did it on Crook City. We have a lot of confidence in you. We feel you can do that.

We're going to have to do something. It's only a matter of time and there's an accident at that intersection. People are going through it. It's a 30-mile-an-hour intersection, but people are obviously going faster. I don't get forced that. I don't have the ability to force that. But the amount of traffic that's going in and out of McDermott now, they're crossing traffic. Even at 30 miles an hour, it could be a real problem. I feel it's going to happen at a higher rate speed. For us to eliminate that inside curve on that section road, that will by itself slow the traffic down. Even if they run the stop sign, which we experienced in Crook City, everybody runs a stop sign, but at least we have a stop sign there. We are covered. Our liability is gone, and by squaring up those intersections, it makes it tougher for them just to run it. I know it's not popular. Everybody's going to be mad. We're going to get phone calls. We're going to get hate speeches on Facebook. We're going to get it all, but it's got to happen. It's better than that to kill somebody, in my opinion.

Any other questions or discussion? Okay, all those in favor of turning that into an all-the-way stop, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay? Motion carries.

That's all I have for you at this time. Do you guys have anything for me? We thought we had calls for Christmas. We'll stop. It'll be a while. I would say that the call's quit finally. We don't have too much complaint about that. I think everybody that drives that all the time, they now see the... People adjust. Yeah. A couple seconds out of your commute in the morning is probably not that bad.

Thank you.

Thank you, John. We'll take a couple minutes here while we get set up for planning and zoning. Remember, it's going to be on the way down.

Thank you. you Okay, we'll call the meeting back to order officially then.

Okay, first up, we have a public hearing, first reading of public hearing of Ordinance 2602, which deals with campaign signs.

Okay, so this is just a campaign sign when we were going through the ordinances we noticed our old ordinance had a specific campaign sign thing. And if you remember, the statute changed maybe, God, it's been six or seven years ago, and we just never updated it. But it was originally, you had to change, like, you couldn't specify what could be on a sign, if you remember that was statute a long time ago. So we updated the ordinance, and as part of that update, we took out the word campaign sign. Well, then we started getting questions as all of this stuff was happening on like, well, what can we do? And I was like, well, I don't know, I can't answer it because it isn't in there anymore. So then part of the discussion came about, well, what would be the best way to do it? So, well, statute, state statute has a thing about displaying campaign signs. Wouldn't it be best to just match that statute? That makes the most sense. And the statute specifically is 930-3.1 And this was specifically to municipalities. Well, it says municipality, not county, but usually we try to be consistent with what it says. So we just changed the wording, just says campaign signs. And then the only difference is in statute, it says a municipality must allow a campaign sign to be placed on private property. And it's this exact wording. I just had it say a campaign sign, maybe. So I just took out the word municipality. because we're just being consistent with that. Other than that, it says the exact same thing. And what it does is it sets up when they can put them up, when they have to take them down. That's all we've kind of done with campaign signs before. So it's 10 days prior, seven days after. What it would do is allow if we do have a problem and somebody doesn't take a sign down, now we can say, wait a minute, statute says you have to take a sign down. That's all we're doing. I mean, I know there was lots of discussion. If anybody listened to planning and zoning, But ultimately, it's just so when someone calls me, I can say, you can put it up this, you can take it down this. We don't really get into size restrictions, because that was a big thing when we did that change. You can have a billboard, you can put a billboard up, you just have to have it here and there. Then your zoning is still there, so we are adding this under on-premise. and off-premise, so we're adding it in both of our current districts. On-premise is allowed as a special situation. We have some other things that are already listed as special situations campaigns that can just be added there. And then it just gives when they can take it down, when they can put it up. And then under off-premise, it says the same thing. And keep in mind, this is on private property. You still can't put them in the public right away. That's normal. You can't do that. If it does happen, we have had situations that we know it's in the public right of way. Sometimes John will pick them up. Sometimes we'll pick them up. We usually call the person and say, hey, if you want your signs back, come get them. If not, they go in the garbage over time. Usually it's the little ones that, you know, the little pole ones. So that's all it's doing. It's not changing anything other than saying when they can put them up and when they can take them down. So there you go.

Could you explain the difference between off-premise and on-premise?

Yeah, on-premise is, let's say, I'll use you, Eric, as an example. Let's say your property, you wanted to put a sign up because you were on-premise. You could do that. Off-premise just means it's somewhere else. It's not on your own property. So, you know, it's down the road here or something. It's something that you don't own. That's probably the easiest way to explain it. That's it. And it's a public hearing?

Cool process. So this is it. As Amber said, this is a public hearing, so this is the time and place that the public has a chance to weigh in on the proposed ordinance. We ask that if you do, you just give us your name and address and you can make your comments. Anybody have any comments they'd like to make on the signboard? Anybody online? Let us know if you want to do that. Does not appear to be anybody wanting to make a public comment. So at that point, we'll close the public hearing and open it up for the commissioner's discussion.

Commissioner Plank. Why was there no discussion about size?

Bruce, do you want to help us? Because we can't with the new... Well, I think it's because of size. I think because it wasn't in the statute.

What we did is just, we followed state law near that statute, as I recall. And so the state law didn't talk about a size restriction. I think in the past your ordinance did was like a four by eight sign or something like that. So again, we're just trying to make it easy and follow state law. It seems to have worked. That's what we have.

I'd like to see a size restriction. I mean, state law doesn't address billboard sizes either, but the county does.

I think you can. Well, I don't know if you can. I think we have to look at the whole sign thing.

That's not regulating content, though, I don't think. So I don't know if there's an issue with that. I don't think. So we'd have to start the process over again. We would.

Any other comments? I don't have a problem with it. I don't have a problem with it. I'm just going to get it done.

If we want to amend it for size. Can we amend it for size?

Not right now.

We'd have to start over with the process. You could do it later.

You could pass this and then amend it. It might be better to do that during non-election.

Yeah. Mr. Chairman, if I may. So I think there was a Supreme Court case a few years ago that weighed in on science and free speech and regulating content. I think that caused you to amend your ordinance three or four years ago. Inadvertently, the part about political science, I think, changed. Most of it went away. And so we just realized that the timing of it maybe is not great, but when we realized that we came in with a fix, it seemed like the obvious fix would be just to mirror state law. It's not meant to punish anybody or be overly restrictive or anything of the sort. There's many trying to have some kind of regulation.

This mimics state law, because I still, I mean, I think, The word freestanding, is that defined anywhere?

Yeah.

It is in our zoning ordinance.

It is in our zoning ordinance, but it says for the purposes of this section, the term campaign sign means a freestanding object identifying and urging a person to vote for or against particular ballot questions or candidate for public office. So it's saying for this ordinance specifically, we would not refer to our freestanding. It is defining it within this. That's why it says that. That's how the state said.

But I don't think it's fine in state law.

Yeah.

Was your question if it's on the side of a building or the side of a bus or the side of whatever, as opposed to a city that's on the stands by itself?

I think that's just a good question because that's why I asked, what's the definition of freestanding?

We have a definition of freestanding. It basically has two folds. That's what freestanding is in our definitions.

It should be a fence.

It could be, you know, a lot of them are put on a fence or there's two poles with a sign in the middle.

Someone on a building wouldn't apply here.

That's not freestanding.

On the side of the bus.

It's not freestanding. But we have to not get into the regulations with the sign. It's never been an issue with us. But that's why I want to clarify because this was a discussion at BNZ. That's why we have this wording in here that says, for the purposes of this section, campaign sign means a freestanding object. It does not say it's a freestanding sign. It says it's a freestanding object identifying and urging a person to vote for or against a particular ballot question. So I would not refer to our freestanding sign definition. It's saying you can put it up as long as it's 10 days and seven days. There's no size restriction, and I'm not going to get into freestanding sign.

Yeah, 9.30. Any other comments? Pick this back up on August 11th. Second reading.

Could you close the door?

I did. Should I move on to the next one?

Well, the next one up is the first reading and public hearing for change of zoning, number 373 from KR61. KR61.

That's the name of the LLC.

That's the name of the LLC. Yep. Okay, I thought they'd do it.

So that is it. Did I see? Randy, do you want to just go with it or do you want me to present it?

I would prefer that you introduce it. Okay.

So the change of zoning on this one is to change from park forest to planned unit development. They purchased the property directly adjacent to the rest of Deer Mountain. So it's just consistent. We've done this twice now where they've purchased land adjacent to it. So they are doing that. The request would allow the property to be rezoned and consolidated into the existing Deer Mountain Village planned unit development. A revision to the development agreement would be required. The first amendment to the development agreement was attached in your packet. It is intended that all lots would be subject to the same covenants as the rest of Deer Mountain Village. It would have water provided by the Deer Mountain Sanitary District and would have private roads similar to the land being developed throughout the existing portions of Deer Mountain Village. All lot sizes will be two acre minimum. The density would be determined by the available water taps through the Deer Mountain Sanitary District. It is intended that each lot would have its own septic system with shared drain fields being encouraged wherever possible. Lighting and signage would be the same as it is in the existing Deer Mountain Village. The Terry Peak Summit Road would only be public road throughout the development. The rest of them, once you get off of Terry Peak Summit are private within the HOA. The change of zoning information has been provided. Staff recommends approval of it. P&Z recommended approval of it. That's kind of where it's at. And then there is lots of information attached. So hopefully you had a chance to review all of that. We did have them do the first draft of the development agreement and the master plan revisions, because that's part of the requirement of that PUD. So those are in there. Ultimately, this one, you're only approving the change of zoning, but we wanted to give you that other information. So we would do a separate motion on those other ones if you think, but we just wanted you to know this is kind of that first step is that change of zoning.

Does the applicant have anything to add?

Yeah, a couple of quick things. The process is Randy Divert, professional management surveying, 1715 Scott Avenue, Spearfish. There's a multi-step process here. The development agreement and master plan will go away if we don't have the changes only moving forward. So we submitted it so that that can be on your next agenda after the second meeting on this so that they keep moving forward. Also, there'll be a preliminary and final plan. And the thing that is a little confusing here as part of the application here is to show the overall maximum density, and that's what we've done. But in theory, we're adding 61 acres to the other existing development, and we have no ability from our water agreement to expand the density, but we have to show what it would be here. And you'll notice on that map that it's two acres or larger. So we're not asking for the exception on the septics any longer than we did in the PUD on the one acre. So we have 200 water taps, and 13 of them are dedicated to the clubhouse, if you read the water agreement. As the clubhouse is underway, we're going to know the water use agency if we're going to take all of the 13 dedicated to them. So it could, in theory, free up three. But in our development agreement and our water agreement now, we're only allowed 187 residential taps. So our density is limited to 187 acres, or 187 lots. So we're adding 61 acres, we're not increasing the density because of the water tap restriction. So we'll have more green space or larger lots. And so as this goes through, you're going to see the preliminary plats and revised preliminary plats showing where we're taking away lots to get to that number. But we can't do that till the zoning is done. So it's a little convoluted, but that's the process. Key is anything that we change on the density, that's 187, we have to come back to this group redo the development agreement. You're just adding 61 acres but keeping 187. Yeah.

Okay, this is a public hearing.

So if there's anybody that would like to make a comment, this is the time to do it. We just ask that you give us your name and address and take your comments. Anybody in the room that would like to do that? Is there anybody online that would like to comment on this change of zoning? Okay, now I will close the public hearing. We'll do a second reading on August 11th. I guess I should have asked if there was anything, I forgot that state. Okay, we'll move on. I would like to just jump down a little bit on the agenda, down to pursuant to SDCL 11228.2, designate Lawrence County Planning and Zoning Director to provide a copy of applications for changing the zoning of the board. county commission.

Mr. Chair? Yeah.

Yep, go ahead.

So this was a law that was passed in the last legislative session. I don't think it really, you won't notice any difference. I think I listened to the testimony on this and it seemed like there was one county that was having a problem. And so because they had a problem, now we have a state law that affects everybody. It affects the procedure for only changes of zoning. So now changes of zoning, technically they all start at the county auditor's office instead of going to planning and zoning. so then there are two parts to it um the county auditor then shall either forward it to the commission and that that means planning and zoning in these terms or or a person designated by the commission so we're going to ask planning and zoning at the next meeting to designate uh amber as the one that the auditor forwards the petitions to but then there's also the part about um about how they get to the county commission and you can designate somebody to uh to provide a copy to the board. In this case, the board is the Board of County Commissioners. So we'd be requesting that Amber be designated as the person to get the application from the auditor and then forward it to the board so that we follow your normal process. You won't even know the difference. Make sense? We're just adding a step in the process that we've been following.

Yeah. And I do want to clarify, because this did take effect July 1st. So right away, I remedied it where basically when an application is submitted on our online system, I get a copy and Brenda gets a copy. So we kind of remediate it that way. And then she says, okay. So this is just so we can finish the process.

So Brenda will now give all the applications and then she will forward them.

So we have a motion.

Do I have a motion by Ewing and Tisdale to designate the Lawrence County Planning and Zoning Director as their point of contact for changing zoning?

All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay.

We can.

Okay, that motion carries.

Question, she just asked if you guys want to do the hidden fines MOA and letter of credit before you go into, that's a county commission item as well.

That is? Yes. Okay, yes.

So if you want to do that one too, we can. Okay, so this one is just the rate. Similar, what we've been doing, Hidden Pines has, again, asked for a decrease in their letter of credit. But in order to do that, we have to make everything match across the board. So we have a new memorandum of agreement and then a new engineering and everything. And I thought I saw Anthony is online, if you have any questions for him. But it's kind of following what we put in place last time, but every time they make a change, we have to have that new one to just match the numbers across the board.

So it's just updating it to reflect the work that's been done.

Correct. Yep. And then he's providing, like I said last time, he's kind of showing you what has been completed and what the new numbers are and the contingency is still in there.

Do you have anything you want to add to that, Anthony?

No, not really. It's just that we're making a little bit of changes to the technique in which we're doing the trenching because we've ran into quite a bit of rock. And so we're trying to avoid blasting. We're also running into locations where we can't blast because we're too close to something sensitive. So that's just what's coming up now. But this will get us to reflect what's already been done. Okay, thank you.

Anthony, can you introduce yourself and who you work for for the record?

Oh, sorry. My name is Anthony Theodoro. I'm the engineer and owner's representative for Hidden Pines Sub, and my company is ATAC, A-T-A-C.

Thank you. All right. We would be entertaining a motion to accept the updated memorandum of

I'll make a motion to approve, or make a motion.

Second. Then moved by Comer, seconded by Ewing, to approve the memorandum of, updated memorandum of agreement with Hinton Pines subdivision. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay? Okay, we'll get that updated. Thank you. Now we move to adjourn this county commission and convene as ordered, which is. Second. Are we adjourning or just recess? Recess is . We should recess. Move to recess as County Commission . I'll second that. Okay, it's been moved by Tisdale, seconded by Nguyen to recess as County Commission and adjourn as Board of Adjustment. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay? Okay, we are now Board of Adjustment.

Okay, so this one you guys have heard already. This is the Root Wellness Harley-Mesner property right off of Evans Lane. You guys did see this. You approved it once as part of that process. We found out that when she gave us all the notices, the notices were not sent properly. So we had to start over again. So she had to reset notices to everybody and kind of go through the process. But the application has not changed. So it's still the same application. Nothing has changed with it. She is looking to change the building to operate. The retail sales and trade business for professional therapeutic services, wellness programming, and limited retail sales related directly to the health development and education that is for whole business. That's what will be in that building. This is the public hearing for it, just to go through the same process. But the application did not change. And you guys did approve it already.

Does the applicant like to add anything?

No, there's been no changes.

Okay, thank you. So this is a public hearing for Conditional Use Permit 501. If you have a comment that you'd like to make on this Conditional Use Permit, just give us your name and address and you can make your comment. Anybody in the audience? Anybody online that would like to comment on this? Does not appear so, so we will close the public hearing and open it up for Commission discussion.

to re-approve CUP 501.

I'll second. Okay, it's been moved by Flanagan, seconded by Comer to open CUP 501, part two. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay. Okay. Hopefully done.

Yep, we should be. Okay. Thank you.

Move to adjourn. I apologize for the confusion. I think some things ratted to the agenda after I structured it, and I did catch it, so I crossed the fusion here. I think you need to remain as board adjustment for home state. Very good. He's on the hallway. We need to fix this. I understand. Morning. Morning.

Do I see anything on there?

Right there. Right there?

Okay. You're welcome to sit down.

Is it in general? Relax. I think the last time I was in this room, it was for the grand jury. Well, you have to get out of jail. That was a learning experience for me. It gave me a huge level of respect all along. Are you going to do Homestake or Richmond Hill first? Either one. Let's do Richmond Hill first. Well, good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. My name's Mark Nelson. I am the new environmental superintendent at Homestake Mining Company Operations in South Dakota, which include the Homestake Mine and Richmond Hill Mine. Mark Teason, who made these presentations for the last 20 years or so, was promoted to closure manager, essentially our general manager So I came in last summer to take over Mark's former role. So I'm gonna try and keep it relatively brief, which can be a challenge for me, but we're gonna start talking about Richmond Hill. As you know, Richmond Hill shut down about, well, over 30 years ago, 1993. Our work at the site now is monitoring the site, maintaining the site reclamation, treating water. Our mine permits are still open, so we're still facilitating compliance with the mine permits as well as surface water discharge permits. And we're working as we do at all our sites to foster a sustainable post-mining land use because all mines have a finite mine life. And so what we're working on now with both Homestake and Richmond Hills is what comes after. Okay, go to the next one, please. One second here. The camera got turned off. Oh, okay. A couple photos there I thought you might be interested in. That's Richmond Hill after mining ceased, before Reclamation started.

And then you'll see the McLean site.

So this table comes from our annual presentation to the Board of Minerals and Environment. Really the main thing to convey with that table is there's about 75 acres that have still not been reclaimed at Richmond Hill. And we'll look at a couple maps that show where that is. So this is the area where the pit impoundment is in the former waste drop dump in Spruce Gulch. And all of the blue areas have been reclaimed and released from reclamation liability by the state.

The red areas are interim reclamation.

look totally reclaimed today but don't quite meet the requirements for final reclamation and then the the green areas are roads that we use for water management some treatment ponds treatment areas and those areas will remain in place for the duration of water treatment which will which will be many decades their current reclamation of the green areas are currently covered by our post closure with the state. Okay, next one please. So there's the leach pad area. Kind of similar situation there, the green at the top center of that photo is the former gold processing plants which have been repurposed for water treatment. The former gold processing building which has been repurposed for water treatment. and all the blue areas are reclaimed and we that's where our primary water comes from tree we'll have another slide to show you that so a big big part of our reclamation maintenance maintenance at richmond hill is wheat spraying every year we just schedule it regardless every year it's kind of a constant maintenance maintenance procedure that we go through every year You can see some mullein and St. John's wort in that photo. But we're getting there. The reclamation's looking really great out there. There's a photo of the leach pads. Both of the leach pads have been capped with a low-permeability clay cover. There's a foot of bentonite-amended soil and four feet of what we call thermal barrier just to just rock to prevent the clay from freezing and then the topsoil and vegetation layer. That's a primary area where we get water that still requires treatment. The flow's about 30 GPM throughout the year. We do get higher flows during wetter periods of the year. We don't think the water's infiltrating through that clay cover. The leach pads were reclaimed in place So on the bottom is the original leach pad, and it's covered with that clay cover. And what we think is that the water is somehow getting in along that interface. But it's an ongoing water treatment requirement for us, about 20 million gallons in 2025. So we continue water quality monitoring. We have a network with surface water sampling sites, groundwater sampling sites. We report all of that data to the state, and then we report the surface water sampling data to EPA. The water quality is really good out there. We're really pleased. There are some local areas right around the pit impoundment and in the former footprint of the waste rock dump where there's still some water quality effects in groundwater. surface water coming off the reclaimed waste dump area meets standards, and we've maintained compliance with all of our permits over the past year, and Cleopatra Creek is beautiful down there, no effects to Cleopatra Creek, based on both the water quality monitoring and periodic monitoring of the aquatic habitat and fish populations, et cetera. I just thought this might be fun for you. Back in 1987, you know, part of the permitting process, you have to figure out what's the post-mining land use going to be. And one thing we've learned over the decades is that it's super important that every mine be designed to meet that post-mining land use. So you start planning from day one. One of the post-mining land uses approved by the Board of Minerals and Environment back in 87 was wildlife habitat. So I thought these were kind of some fun pictures. Game Fish and Parks operates a wildlife camera on Richmond Hill property just west of the leech beds. I was thrilled when I saw the bear because I'd heard about a bear up around Maitland a few years ago, but gosh, this summer I'm hearing bear rumors all over the place. But sure enough, there's evidence of a bear up at Richmond Hill. So that's new for us. The other post-mining land use approved by the Board of Minerals and Environment was future industrial use, i.e. mining. And way back in 87, they recognized that there was gold ore up there that was known ore, but not economic to mine at the time, and that there was also excellent potential to discover more gold resources out there. And so, as I think you all know, Dakota Gold holds a purchase option that they can exercise Anytime prior to the end of December, 2028, they're doing a lot of excellent work up there. That photo is just a groundwater monitoring well installation that they're working on one day. I was up at Richmond Hill. See a really nice clean operation, lined pond that manage the drilling fields. Really first rate work up there.

So we're happy to have to go to pole. Working up there and we're bowling for them in terms of

being able to exercise the purchase option. All of their activities, just so you know, are permitted separately through the state through a series of exploration permits and bonded separately. So that's it for Richmond Hill. I wanted to keep it brief, but any questions, any?

Are the 75 acres yet to be reclaimed? Is that just because of water treatment that they have to be reclaimed? It includes the hall road.

Yeah. which we need to access into the water treatment plant. It includes the roads right around the treatment plant, water storage ponds that we use as part of the treatment process, and then similar areas in there around Spruce Gulch where the waste rock dump was. Yeah, so those will be required for the duration of water treatment. We're currently... We initially bonded in our post closure bond for 100 years of water treatment. And I think we're at about 90 years right now in the post closure bond. So we have to put up bond to provide for reclamation of all those areas. It won't be happening for some time in the future. Thank you.

Yeah.

So let's talk about Homestake now. We manage the portions of the Homestake mine that were not donated to the state. And so that includes the open cut, the east waste drop dump, which is the big waste drop dump you see when you drive up through Central City on your left, the saw pit waste drop dump, which you don't see from the highway, the Grizzly Gulch tailings facility. And so we're continuing to manage that. I thought we'd just talk about what our main focus area is right now. Employee and public safety is our number one priority. Of course, water management, very similar to Richmond Hill. Geotechnical monitoring, we'll talk a bit about that. Reclamation monitoring and maintenance. And similar to Richmond Hill, fostering productive and sustainable post mining land uses. We have 12 employees at this point. and continue to try to support the community as we can with community donations every year, which Homestake has done for many years. Okay, next one, please. So a mundane task, but a super important task is maintaining fences and gates. One of our environmental specialists, Eric Eisner, inspects all of the gates and all of the fences and signage around Homestake every month. With that body, you can really see how important that work is. We'll talk more about geotechnical stability in a later slide. And one thing I thought I'd mention is the Grizzly Gulch tailings facility is managed in accordance with very strict requirements called the GISTN, the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management. massively more stringent than state standards. But that's a policy that BERC has for all their minds worldwide, that every tailings facility will be managed in accordance with the GISTM. And one of our engineers on the site, Mark Jawaska, a huge part of his job is related to meeting all of those various GISTM standards for Giza Gulch. As part of that work, we're planning a... exercise emergency uh response exercise that uh mark is working on planning now that will involve some of the county people and local emergency responders very unlikely that it would ever be needed at grizzly gulch but as part of the gs gistm we're going to go through and do that exercise this year water management um Similar to Richmond Hill, we continue monitoring it. We have both active water treatment, like, for example, the Blacktail Water Treatment Plant that you see when you drive through Central City, as well as one at the Yates Waste Drop Dump. We pump water from the Grizzly Gulf Stream and its impoundment to the lab, and then it's treated in the old original water treatment plant that was constructed at the Homestake Mine, We pay the lab each year to treat water that comes from Grizzly Gulf. It's an excellent synergy between the lab and Barrett. Overall, we're maintaining permit compliance. Things are going well. Okay, next. Similar table. Basically, at Homestake, everything is reclaimed. There are 87 acres that have not passed the, requirements of the state for meeting the post mining land use. The ANR is very strict on that. And we'll talk about why, but we're continuing to work on that. Okay, next one, please. So this is a reclamation map of the areas that are covered by the state mining permit, as well as the county conditional use permits. All the red areas are reclaimed and released from reclamation liability. The yellow areas, which is the bottom slopes on the east waste rock dump as you drive up through Central City, those are the areas that have not been erased yet. And the reason is that we've been having issues over the years with slumping of the soil on the steep slopes, continuing to work to get a vegetative cover that will hold the soil on the slopes. The blue areas on that map, are areas similar to Richmond Hill that will be needed for long-term water treatment. And so those will be reclaimed at the end of the post-closure period. Okay, next slide. I thought that was such a neat picture. Mark Zawaska took that of the weed spraying drone operating at the open gut. The weed spraying drones are just amazingly efficient ways to treat weeds in all of the mines up around here. So that's been a great advancement.

Similar to Richmond Hill, we spray weeds every year.

Okay, next please. So last year, Mark showed some of these slopes on the bottom of the East Waste Drop Dump where we'd seen some soil slumping. And I thought you might appreciate kind of a before and after picture. So on the left was back in 2024 after that slump had occurred. And then the one on the right is in 2025. So the soil was replaced on the slope. The hydromulch mulched it, put a really aggressive soil tactifier on it. And thus far, it's been performing really well. It's still stable this year. But we're watching that area very close along with the state inspectors. So kind of unique to the home state mind, we do a lot of geotechnical monitoring of that east waste drop dump and of the area around the open cut. to make sure all of that rock is stable, make sure the open-cut high wall is stable. It's not going to affect any of the surrounding neighborhoods or the park. There's a whole network of inclinometers and isometers, survey monuments that are like a survey reflector permanently mounted into the high wall that they can shoot periodically with a survey instrument. And in recent years, we've been using a neat technology called InSAR, Now they have satellites that can detect millimeter scale disclosures from space. It's really amazing technology. So on the right is an InSAR image. All the green areas in that map had not moved at all, did not move at all in 2025. And the satellite was able to detect just a very slight amount of settling on a yellowish green. a couple of millimeters of settling over 20.5. So that's a neat technology that Eric uses at some of their other sites worldwide, recommended for us here in Lee. The open cut area is also monitored very closely. And as you've probably noticed when you've been up in the area, there are local failures where a safety bench, portion of a safety bench within the pit has failed. That's pretty common in old open pit mines. Overall, the area is stable. There's one area called the East Block that had a larger scale slope failure 10, 12 years ago. It's been stable thus far. It's monitored very carefully by our geotechnical engineers. It is possible that there could be more movement there, but based on our engineers' reviews, if that does move, any effects would be internal to the vehicle. No concerns at Manuel Brothers Park, the visitor center, the surrounding neighborhoods, but that's something we continue to monitor carefully. I thought these two pictures were fun that I came across in the bio. Of course, you guys all remember this, but there's the slime plant back in the 1980s, versus the Deadwood Mountain Grand Hotel and Casino. That, along with the underground lab, are just amazing examples of sustainable and productive post-money land uses that benefit the community. And we continue to work to identify additional opportunities to redevelop. formally mining effective interstate property. So it's gonna be beneficial to the community. So the last slide there I have is just a new sign we put up on the Mickelson Trail here by the H-1 truck dump. It's a nice sign, captures history. Worked closely with several other agencies and got that sign installed. So that is it for me. Thank you all very much for your time and your attention. Glad to answer any questions. Throughout the year, if you ever have any questions, let us know. Glad to keep you informed just as much as you want to be. Anybody have any questions for Mark? Appreciate it. Thanks for coming.

Okay, thank you. I believe that concludes our work as Board of Adjustment. We'll be adjourning. I will adjourn. Board of Adjustment reconvenes County Commission. Thank you. Second. Moved by Blankens, seconded by Comer to adjourn as County Commission and reconvene as Board of Adjustment and reconvene as County Commission. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Call to make. Back to County Commission. Welcome, Mrs. Trout.

Morning, guys. How are you doing?

Great.

Good. I have a bunch of stuff. I'll just start going through it. If you guys have any questions, just stop me Otherwise, I'll keep going to get you guys back on track. I'll start off with our interest. As you can see on the spreadsheet I provided with you, as of July 20th, we had $22,888,057.17. I have it spread out between the checking account at First Interstate. I have part of that sweeps out every night. We can make a little bit of interest on that. I have a money market at the First Interstate, and then I have our Wells Fargo sweep account. Then we have our county petty cash and then the doors for the county treasurer's office. Right now, the sweep account for Wells Fargo is making 3.5%. The sweep account at First Interstate is at 0.19. My money market at Interstate is at 3.22. The percentage of money, Wells Fargo has 79.01%, and First Interstate has 20.99%. I don't have money at any of the other banks right now. At the time their funds were down, I don't receive these right now because they weren't doing very good at all. The sweep account at Wells Fargo was holding good, but right now we are approximately 27% down interest rates from what we were last year. Part of that is because the interest rates have dropped. And I'm running with about $2.5 million less in our accounts than what we had last year. So that kind of explains why our money's down a little bit on interest rates. I don't foresee the interest rates going up right away. But the interest rates have stayed the same at Wells Fargo for the last six months. So that's one of the things that is kind of staying steady there. I'll just watch, you know, if I have a chance to get some money somewhere else, if the interest rates are below, I'll try to move it. But for right now, I'll just stay with Wells Fargo because it's flexible. It's in the SWIFT account. If we need it, I can move it, right? I just have to write a check to get it out and deposit it at First Interstate. Any questions on the money? The elderly tax freeze. They passed a new law in January of 2026. The new eligibility amounts took effect And with the program change, we saw a 25% increase in taxpayers that qualified for the tax freeze. We currently have 285 people in the program. And I foresee this number increasing this year because it will go up again, either by CPI or 3% for the amount of income. So I think that's going to be a good thing. And this year I only had 50 denial letters and that runs about the same every year is around 50. So it, with the changes they made in it, we did see, you know, a lot more people qualifying for it. So that's good. The girls work really hard. If somebody gets on our program, we don't let them off unless they either desist or sell it. Sarah works really hard. If we don't have it in by April 1st, she's calling them. Or if they don't answer something, if we have a, if we know they're elderly, if there's a family member I can get a hold of, we call them and say, hey, You need to get their paperwork in. We don't want them to lose this because I know a couple of them, if they didn't have this program, they wouldn't be able to stay in their house. So we work really hard to keep them on the elderly tax freeze. And with them raising the rates, it's really helped out a lot in Lawrence County getting some more people on it. So that worked out really good.

Did you say 281? 285 we have on it.

And that was a 25% increase from the year before. So it's made a big difference, and we're trying to get more people to realize the program's out there. I mean, it's been on the back of my tax cards for the last 25 years that it's out there. Department of Revenue has really made pushes for people to come to the county and apply for it. We tell people about it when they call and say our taxes are too high. We say, please apply, see if you qualify. It's on our county web page, and we do what we can to try to get them to know that that program's out there. They just have to apply. Sometimes they might not qualify, but if they're close, we keep them on a list and we have them reapply again the next year. So every little bit helps. Postage fees for motor vehicles. Last year, the county lost $658 in postage fees. And that's with us mailing out license plates. In July of 25, our office realized we were losing postage because the fees went up with the post office. So I reached out to Pennington County and we presented a resolution at the county convention saying, hey, we need to go back to the legislature again, give postage fees to raise. And we got Senator Divert to carry the bill for us. And as of this July 1st, the postage for mailing fees went up. The decals went to 250 and we got the place up to $12. So hopefully this will be sufficient for more than two years. That's what our last race got us was two years, and we went back in the hole again. We couldn't do the emergency clause on it like we did two years ago because we didn't think the bill would pass. So we had to go until July 1st, but hopefully we're back on track with postage for a couple years. We'll keep an eye on it, and if we start losing money again, the charge will go back to legislature and get that taken care of again because most of our place we mail out our out-of-staters and the taxpayers of Lawrence County shouldn't have to make up the difference in posting. So we're doing good there. For the past two years, the Treasurer's Office has collected over $12 million a year in motor vehicle business. This averages out to about a million dollars a month. Some months are a little higher, some months are a little lower. For the first six months of this year, we've collected $237,000 more than this time last year.

Do you have a chart for this, the key directory?

That will be coming up on this one here.

That'll be our next one here.

So for 2025, the Lawrence County Treasurer's Office is fourth in state processing the titles, which is the first one right here. The only ones ahead of us are Lincoln, Pennington, and Minnehaha. We're eighth in the state in population, but we're fourth in title transfers. And that was an 8.5 increase over 24. We get $5 per title this process, which was we brought in $79,760.25 just in the titles that we process that the county gets to keep. The state gets five and we get five. I attribute that increase to all the out-of-state mail that the office handles to track all the incoming mail. We had to do something because we were getting so much coming in. that we set up an Excel spreadsheet. So when the titles come in the mail, we enter them in by name and date in the vehicle. And if it's, we bundle them up by date, unless it's somebody that, like you bought a car from a dealership and they're mailing it in to us, then we call the customer, say, hey, your paperwork's here. That goes into a file for dealers or banks. And then as the girls are working them, if the people are short paperwork, that goes into another file and marked waiting for paperwork. And then if we have one that we're waiting for money, we've worked it, we've called them, and we have to wait for money, that goes into another file. So we have four files sitting there, daily work and the three pending files. So at any time, we can have between 200 and 225 files pending, waiting to be worked in the office at any time for the title work. It's kind of an ongoing process. Right now, we're about 15 to... 17 days out on our piles to work. We work them as they come, unless you come to the counter. You come to the counter and say, hey, my file, our title's here. We pull it and we work it. It just depends on the tax time. You know, if we've got taxes or something going on, we might get a little further behind on our mail work, because mail taxes come first. But sometimes we get a little behind, but we work it up. And I'll just go over the rest of the spreadsheet here for titling or for licensing. Our registrations, we are fifth in the state, and that's up 4%. Motorcycles and mopeds, we're third in the state. We're up 3.2% on that. ATVs, this is just licensing or the registrations of them. We're third in the state. We're up 7% on that. Recreational vehicles, we're third in the state. We're up 11% on that. Commercial vehicles. We're 10th in the state. We're down 3%. And that's because we had a bunch of construction vehicles out of Wyoming that were doing work here in South Dakota. And then they were done and they left. So we lost some money there. Boats were down 4.5%. We're 11th in the state. Probably because the water's down there, not licensed in my ODO. Trailers, we're 7th in the state and we're up 2.75%. Snowmobiles, we're second in the state, and we're up to 27.5%. Buses, we're the same. We're ninth in the state on that. Electric vehicles, we're fourth in the state, and we're up 57% on that. That's, I believe, because we have so many out-of-staters, and they do a lot of electrical vehicles and stuff, and we do have a few locals that have them. ATV decals. The state has them now with our new system. I can track the decals that we sell, and those are strictly to out-of-state people buying the decals. We are number one in the state at 1,077. The closest person to us in the state is 316. I only did the top 15. Out of the state on decals, 26 counties did not sell any of them. 27 counties did 10 or less. And we're at 1,077. It's, yeah, we're the king of ATVs. And some days they're stressful at the counter.

And we keep $25 of that?

Yes. On that report there, the girls in my office a couple years ago came up with the idea that we needed, because a few years ago we had to do by, they can only get a temporary permit by paper. And it was a hassle. We got nothing for it. And my girl said, well, why can't we do like a decal or something? So I presented it to Rosa at DMV. She took it and ran with it and got the decals to go with it and then put it in there that cost $50 for the decal. The county gets 25 of it and the state gets 25 of it. And since we started that in 23, We've gotten $24,120.50. $24,000 was $24,750. $25,000 was $26,554. And right now we're at $12,553. And we're up, I think, 71 decals since last year at this time. We've got three big months coming, too. Oh, yeah. And this past week has been, yeah, fun with them. So we're doing good on the decals. I mean, we make money on it, but before we got nothing for it. We were doing all the work, and we got nothing for it. And the decals does help. It helps law enforcement a lot, too, because they have to have it, and it's easier instead of papers in the window and stuff like that. So that's worked out good for the law enforcement. Well, the decal cells are up. The money is up 7%, so we're doing good there.

And those decals, do we track whether they're in-state, out-of-state?

Decals can only be sold to out-of-state. If you're a resident of South Dakota, you have to title your vehicle, and it's your choice if you want to license it or not. But if you want to ride it on the roads, you have to get a license plate. Then we have the wheel tax. Our wheel tax has... Our wheel tax has increased every year since 2022. All the money that has to go into the road and bridge funds, Lawrence County collects on vehicles up to 6,000 pounds, $2 per tire, up to four tires for a max of $8. Vehicles, 6,000 one pound or more is $5 per tire, up to two tires for a max of $10. That's per tire. The per $5 tire helps Lawrence County qualify for the big grants that John gets. And we've been doing really good on that. As you can see, every year we've gone up. So since it's gone into conception, it's helped a lot with that. In July 1st of 2001, the new fee went into effect, charging out of state residents $100 fee the first time that they bring a title into the process. Of $100, the county gets to keep $50 and the state gets 50. And we're already up 68 times compared to the same time last year. Last year we made $82,450 on just our $50 fee. Right now, we're at $43,250, and like I said, we're up already. And that's just a one-time fee for the out-of-staters. No, it doesn't matter. It's year-round. But yeah, we do get a lot of them, especially during the rally time. They come in, and they want to license their motorcycles. They come here, and they decide they want to license here, so we get a lot during August, too. It bumps up.

Do the rental companies still register here too? I'm sorry, what? The rental companies, car rental companies?

They have a, my one out of Montana has an address in South Dakota. So they don't get charged the $50 fee, but we make a lot of money off their wheel tax. This past week, we just did 75 vehicles for them. So we got the $5 title fee and we get all their wheel tax and their vehicles never drive in South Dakota. We make a lot of money. They run with over 1,000 vehicles in South Nevada through our county. So all of this comes with a lot of work for our office. Greg ran a report for me. Our phones never stopped ringing in our office. A lot of it's motor vehicle questions, property taxes, and Greg ran the report for me between June 18th of 25 to June 17th of 26, there were 29,193 calls that came through my office on our main line, not our private lines, just the main line. The total includes calls that went to our voicemail under the main line, but not to the direct line. So averaging it out for the days that we worked and stuff, that's 112 calls a day. And then if they leave messages, we still have to call them back. And then Greg, that report also showed how many how much time was for all those calls and stuff. That came up to 1,200 hours of time on the phone at my office answering calls back. Some of them are lengthy and stuff. He also ran a report for emails, and my office has a email that goes directly to our office that we all get, and that's where we try to direct our public so if they have questions, we can all pick it up so we don't miss it or something. And just to that correct email, not to our personal ones, for 90 days was 651. And then I get them constantly just for my banking, all of that stuff. So our office is really busy. So, like, if people come in and they don't see people, customers at the counter, we're still busy at the office. I mean, we're answering emails. We're doing paperwork. It's constantly busy in the office. But the girls are really good. at trying to keep things up. And taxes, right now we're sitting at $634,925 in delinquent taxes. Just two days ago, I sent out 25 warning letters advising the property owners as of this coming December 26th, I will be starting action to take deed to their properties because they're over three years old. Usually when I send out warning letters, I will get some of them to clean it up, hopefully. And then I have three properties that I won't start working to take deed to. And unfortunately, I don't think people will pay that we'll end up giving the deeds to them in their property properties. They'll do that. And right now, I do not have our taxes online. I'm working with Brett and Greg that we're hoping possibly that we can get it on Brett's Beacon site. She's had really good luck with the Beacon site for her people being able to look at properties on there for location and access to that stuff. So we've been kind of working on that. Hopefully maybe we can get an option to have our property taxes on there too. Yeah. It might cost a little bit to get, you know, the initial time to get it on there. I know Brett charges for hers to be looked up, but we're looking at tax part of it. You wouldn't get charged to look Cause, and if we could get that on there, that would really hopefully, you know, lessen up the phone calls coming into the office. Cause every day we've got people calling, meeting, you know, to know, you know, a lot of bankers and stuff and, or the emails from the closing companies and stuff, they'd have access to the taxes right there. But that's what Greg and Brett are really helping me to try to get that set up. I know that's a lot of information. It's a big time question.

We added a staff member was it last year or two years? Yes.

And thank, Goodness, you guys did. It has worked out really great. And I got lucky and got a really good worker. She's fit right in and she's caught on really fast. And I don't know where I'd be without having that extra person. So I really appreciate that.

But your staffing level is manageable at this point?

Yes. And honestly, I would have no place to even put another person. I'd have to build a second floor in our office. And I don't know if that would work. But no, we're doing good. Sometimes we have to do what we call a push day. If we get too behind on our motor vehicle, we just, everybody stops what they're doing and we just work the mail for a day or two to get caught back up. Sometimes after taxes, you know, you get, because that's our main focus, we have to get the taxes done. The mail gets behind and we tell the people that are, especially the outersiders, sorry, it's going to be a little bit, we're behind. But I feel that we're doing good because prior to Pennington County's issue, they were about three to four weeks behind Clay County's five to six weeks behind on getting their mail processed and stuff. And we were sitting at two weeks or something. So I think we're doing good. And we're way ahead of them on most of the other than Pennington County on our titles and stuff. So the girls work really hard to put out a lot of good work.

Good. The state software system, is that got most of the bugs worked out or? still having challenges with that.

Lawrence County and the ladies in my office are their guinea pigs. We're the ones that went first on, just here back in March, we were the first ones that went live on scanning. We scan all of our paperwork in as the customers go, and that is a really good, a good thing. And we started scanning in our office ahead of time because of some issues that happened. We were scanning in-house, so when we went live, it was really easy to do. If they have some other things that need to be tested out, my girls do it because Megan was one of them that worked with the state from the beginning, and she's really smart at it. There's some really good things in it. There's still some major bugs that need to be worked out, but overall, it's working pretty good. I mean, just like anything, you're going to have some bumps in the road, but some of the stuff is very manageable.

So you're still having to mail title applications to the state, correct?

We scan it all, but now we just put it in a box and we mail it down there. Because everything's scanned down there, because I have no place to keep it, and it has to be kept for two years. No, it has to be kept for 18 months, and I physically have no place to keep that stuff. So right now, until the state gets more comfortable with all the scanning and stuff, we have to mail it down there to Pierre. I don't know if down the road they're going to have us have to destroy it. And then I'm not sure how that's going to work because I can't just throw it in the dumpster out back. Then we would have to pay to have it shredded.

Yeah. Do the boxes of original documents that you send to the state always make it? No.

August 23rd of last year, I had a major issue. I mailed all this stuff down there, and it never got there.

What'd you get?

What?

What'd you get back?

A piece of paper. In a bag? Yeah. It wasn't nothing. The post office lost everything.

Original documents?

Everything.

You had to reproduce it, didn't you? How does that happen, too?

They lost my whole box. There was 99 titles and everything in there. We track our boxes. We put a tracking number on it. and it went from Deadwood to Rapid to Denver to Omaha and it never left Omaha office. They think it got smashed and everything got imploded and they just scooped it up and then the post office has some big huge room that they put all of this stuff in, it's the size of a football and then after so long they shred it.

I got mine delivered but it was the tracking number

And that was it on the envelope in a piece of plastic that got delivered where it was supposed to. It had no other part of the package with it.

Well, I had to, it took me three months to get that all working with Pierre. I had to do affidavits and make copies of everything and send to Pierre because our customers could not be held harmless. And that's, so I had to do affidavits for everybody saying that the, Paperwork was in my office because we kept copies of the receipts we did so I could get title numbers off of that. And I had to do affidavits and sign a bunch of stuff and send it all down to Pierre so that we could get the title work done for these people. And so after that, we started scanning everything in-house so if the post office lost something, we could reproduce it. So I'm really glad that we're scanning as we go now because if the post office loses something, We have it. And I had to send certified letters out to every person that that cost us. It cost the county $564 because I had to send out certified letters to every person that was in that box telling them that their information was compromised.

Could have been.

And the people were really good. They called and just asked if they needed to do anything and stuff, but they were all notified. And luckily, all their titles got produced by the state.

It'd be a lot better if we could send those electronically. It'd be a lot safer and a lot cheaper.

Well, we do. We scan them in. It's going electronically now, copies of everything.

Right, but if you didn't have to send them at all.

I know, but down the road, eventually, I think we'll have to destroy them on this side. But that's, I don't know if that'll have to be done through legislature or if the state can do, you know, once they feel confident on how all the scanning's doing, and then we'll have to destroy them on our end. I'd hate to be Pennington County and Minnehaha having to destroy all their stuff because they have way more to redo. You guys want anything else, though?

Thank you very much. Yep, we can take five minute breaks.

Good, hopefully they'll look at the video.

We're back on? Yep, we are. So we'll come back into order here. Next up on the agenda is Senate Bill 96, property tax relief discussion. I thought it might be helpful just to kind of go over what Senate Bill 96 does and how it came about. There's been a little confusion here along the line. So Secretary Howdy Schell of the Department revenue secretary and sent out some slides in the little presentation, so I'm borrowing some of his slides from that. So I thought it might be helpful just to review a little bit about why we have property taxes. So property taxes fund local governments. The schools, the cities, the county, we don't have a lot of townships in Lawrence County, but we do have fire districts and road districts, all of those get their funding from of property taxes. The sales tax only goes towards cities and state government. So state government doesn't have an income tax. They don't take any property tax. It's mostly a sales tax that funds them. So the state employees, the Medicaid, the roads, National Guard, all of that goes, funding comes from sales tax. The state does collect some property tax to fund the schools for their school, state school fund formula. So that is a mill levy that's set by the state to apply to the school funding. And that mill levy rate last year was 4.457. The county also has a mill levy and that is set based on size of our budget and divided by the valuation. So just as a reference, mill levy last year for the county was 2.821. So just as a pie chart about where your taxes actually go, you can see there that, and this is the statewide average. Lawrence County is within a couple of percent of each one of those. I think our schools are probably a little more. Our county is just a little bit less than that. But predominantly your property taxes are going towards school, a little bit on the counties. Some of it goes to the county. As far as Senate Bill 96 goes, it only is going to affect the county share of the owner-occupied. So keep that in mind that even though it's affecting your property taxes, it's only about a fourth of the property taxes that you actually pay that Senate Bill 96 would affect. So thanks to this being an election year and several candidates wanting to lump these bills together to make it sound like more of an impact, I thought it We'll just talk about some of the bills that are impacting the property tax right now. The first is Senate Bill 216, which was passed in 2015. That limited the amount of valuation increase a county could collect. And so it's a little confusing because we've had a lot of demand on housing in Lawrence County and in the Hills region over the last five or six years. And as we know, that has driven the price of housing up. It's driven all of our valuations up. Because as the state statute, the county has to increase the valuation for property tax to 85 to 100% of the sales ratio. So we've had to raise that valuation. And it's, you know, we had, I think, close to 20% increases in valuation some of those years. So Senate Bill 216 sought to limit that at only a 3% increase per year. But that's on the countywide average. So there might be individual homeowners that, the valuation goes up more than 3%. You know, if you're in a neighborhood that it might go up 6%, another neighborhood doesn't go up any. So that average is three, went up 6%. The county average couldn't go up more than three. There's also a budgetary limitation that state statute is there all the time that we can only raise it based on a 3% increase or cost of living increase. But this, the new construction growth didn't enter into that prior statute. And so Senate Bill 216 also limited new construction growth could only raise 3%, which honestly puts the counties in somewhat of a pickle. It puts municipalities into a pickle. If you have a new housing development, the counties or the municipalities are having to supply those developments with infrastructure. There's increased law enforcement costs, increased road construction costs. but we can only capture 3% of that. So in some cases there was a new growth, particularly around the Sioux Falls area, there was some new growth valuations of 15 or 20%, but they could only capture 3% of that. So it puts the counties in a bind on that. So that's 216. I'll jump over to Senate Bill 245. That was to address school funding. And so three years ago, the state of South Dakota voted to lower the state sales tax rate from 4.5% to 4.2%. That bill or that law sunsetted in January or July 1st of 26 of this year. And so that then went back from 4.2 to 4.5. So the state is going to use that 0.3% and capture that money and put that into a separate school tax fund. And that will offset your taxes paid for school funding, the property taxes for school funding. Senate Bill 96, which just became law January 1st, allows the county commissions to enact a county sales tax up to a half a percent. And all of that revenue is just going to go strictly towards owner-occupied property tax relief. I think maybe the next slide kind of talks about how that is done a little bit. So if the county were to adopt or implement the county sales tax, the process that that would work is that the retailers would collect this tax. They would send that tax money to the Department of Revenue. The Department of Revenue would then send the county share back to the county. I think they were issuing payment twice a month. Our auditor would set up a separate property tax relief fund. So she would track that money. put that into the fund, and then when the homeowners then got their tax bill, the county would apply the money in that fund as a credit to their tax bill. So if you, you know, say you get your total tax bill is $3,000 and there was enough money in the property tax fund to issue your property a $500 credit, you'd have it listed that your total tax bill is $3,000 You have a credit of $500, and so then your total tax bill becomes $2,500 for the year. So that's kind of how that was going to work. Some of the counties have already adopted this ordinance that it requires to do that. A couple of our neighboring counties. I'll admit that I've slow walked this forward a little bit. I wanted to do that just to make sure we had more information before us. Part of that is the county budget. I wanted to know what our mill levy was going to be so we could better gauge what the impact to homeowners was going to be. I wanted to collect a little more information from the Department of Revenue of what the sales tax was going to be in our county. The sales tax figures we had when Senate Bill 96 was going through the legislature, that was 2024 numbers. At this point, we have much more updated numbers for that. And I also wanted to see if there was any interest in pushing an initiative from the public to bring this to a public vote. To my knowledge, nobody's taken out any petitions, so that hasn't happened yet, so we'll move on with this. The timeline of Senate Bill 96 then, as I said, it took effect July 1st. Up until that time, the counties could not do anything to act on this law. We couldn't pass an ordinance. We couldn't even bring it up formally in the meetings. But we had to wait until then, which is why you saw some of the neighboring counties pick that up in July. So the process is that we would need to adopt an ordinance to be able to implement that. Even though it's a state statute, it's up to the counties to adopt an ordinance to take that up and implement it. And there's also the opportunity for a public vote, whether it's an initiative measure from the public to bring this up or a refer. If the commission either voted for it or against it, it could be referred to a public vote at that point. The other part of this timeline that's important is that the Department of Revenue has said that they will only start collecting the county sales tax on January 1st or July 1st, no other times during the year. And they also need to have 90 days notice from the counties before they start to collect that tax. So if you do the math, January 1st of 2027, if implemented, comes back to the first part of October. So the county would need to adopt an ordinance to implement this to request the Department of Revenue to collect the tax. As long as we get this ordinance passed by the end of September, there's still time to get that done. There's really no advantage to getting it done before that. The counties that have adopted it in July, they're not going to be able to collect tax any before the counties that would adopt this in September. So moving on. The other part of this is there's two options of when the tax credit would be seen to the homeowners, to the owner occupied. Option one, the county can wait and collect a year's worth of sales tax money to know exactly what that money is going to be, and then look what's in the property tax relief fund, and then divvy that up according to the valuation of all the homeowners, and that would affect the 2028 taxes. So we would collect the money, in 2027, apply that in 2028. Option two is that the county could project or estimate how much property tax or sales tax money we're going to get and offer that as a credit right away in 2027. Certainly some risk in doing that. Sales tax has been fairly stable, I think, in Lawrence County. Right now, the figures that the state was using when they were working on this in January, a little under $6 million in sales tax money. When I checked a couple of weeks ago, they thought we were going to be about a little over $6 million. So it's pretty stable at about $6 million. The other part of this is the county has to figure out how to implement this. It sounds pretty simple. You just collect some money. You just put that as a tax credit on your bill and send that up. The software challenging there is a big part of this. You can't just add a line onto it. It's as simple as that. Equalization needs to be involved. The auditor's office needs to be involved. The technology people need to be involved. Department of Revenue is probably also going to be involved in how to do this.

Do you have a question? So I know that Greg from IS&T, Brenda and Deb and Brett all met to talk about the software challenges. Some counties I think are having software issues. I think Greg has designed our current software that we're using so he's able to, with some work, able to implement whatever you decide to do. So there's probably no pick up on our end in that regard.

Does that make sense? So there are some counties that use out of the box software program, their vendors are not sure that they can even get this done by next year. But I want to bring up, though, that Senate Bill 96 does allow the counties to use up to 2% of that sales tax collected for upgrades in software and staffing. So that's just for one year. Every year after that, we can take out $20,000 of the sales tax money in the Property Tax Relief Fund to cover the extra staffing that's going to be required to be able to implement this. So otherwise, then I believe also the State Department of Revenue takes a small percentage for their administration. So essentially, almost all of the sales tax money would go towards property tax relief. So that kind of brings us to where we are now. That will be an agenda item with a first reading and a public hearing of the ordinance. But we did send out copies of the proposed or the model that the state sent out of the ordinance that would be required. Also sent out a couple of copies there of both Mead and Pennington counties, because they made some changes in that. I think we could probably talk a little bit about those changes just so we can put forth an ordinance.

Yep. So to pass an ordinance requires a first and a second reading. It's not planning and zoning related, so it does not require a public hearing. So it takes two commission meetings with at least five days in between. Then there has to be publication, and it comes effective 20 days thereafter.

It was my intention to have that on the August 11th agenda for the first reading, and then August 25th probably for the second.

This is based upon the model that we write. And I put in Lawrence County, not to be presumptuous.

So at the top paragraph there, I think there is the first line under purpose. The purpose of this ordinance is to provide additional revenue for Lawrence County by imposing a gross receipts. I think that probably needs to be struck out because this is not additional revenue for Lawrence County. This is just strictly property tax relief. made that change. So it reads, just the purpose of this ordinance is to impose a county gross receipts tax pursuant to the powers, et cetera. So I think that was a positive change that we might want to make. We send you our changes. Pardon? We send you our changes. Yeah, it's just, yeah, take it off the meet counties, yeah. Anybody else see anything that they if they could look before we got to the next meeting. If any can make a couple other changes, I don't know. Some of these changes that they were making are covered in state statute, but probably were necessary.

The Meade County example, I think they ended up taking out of the paragraph six and seven, I think they were kind of redundant, as Eric said, they're in statute.

I just want to make a few general comments. I know there are some people in our community that have heartburn with this, but the property owners, I think, are all behind it. Sales tax is probably the fairest tax that we have. I mean, the people coming and going through our community, like the influx of people we're going to have through this next month, they help pay towards that. So it's a win-win for us to I think it's a win-win for us to take an advantage of this at the full half cent. I know when you go to the grocery store, that half cent's not going to really jump out and bite you. It's there.

I just want to remind everybody it's not a tax cut, it's a tax shift. It's getting paid one way or the other. The other thing is there's been a lot of people, and I understand, I own property and and they want some relief and they'd like it now. The ones that own property, the ones that don't have a different idea. And you're getting emails and phone calls daily. There's some people that want to stomp on the gas and get this done right now. Realize this just became law 30 days ago. And people that's like, God, if you're not doing this right now, I don't know what you're doing. Nothing happens until October 1. So I don't know why you would jump off the cliff without stopping and taking a peek over it to make sure there's not a big pile of snakes at the bottom. that just people that think they have the answer and you better do this right now. It's like, take a breath. We've got time. I know you think that there's not time, but there's time. You know, and I said, I'm cautiously optimistic. And right now things look like they're heading in the right direction. But, you know, some of the emails and some of the stuff you see on social media, people know better than we do. People know better than you do. People know better than the state and everybody else. And it's like, well, you know, If you want that kind of decision making, then get that kind of decision makers.

I like to see what I'm doing before I make a decision.

And I think we're proceeding down a responsible path, and I think we'll let somebody else jump out in front of us and take point until we're comfortable, and then we'll get out and do it ourselves.

A couple more comments that I meant to say. I would also like to see the public vote on this. I think that's dumb, I think. I'd really like to have that happen and so hopefully when we take action, individuals in the community will do so because I think this is important and would have a lot of meaning and end result if the community was able to vote on it. Even though it does stress our auditor and her office and also some more taxpayer dollars, but I think it's important enough and I think the general public should vote on this. if the opportunity presents.

It does affect us all, whether you're a property owner or not. Sure. You're going to buy some item that's going to be a sales tax.

I'll just make kind of the same general comment. I'm going to rush into this because I'm trying to research it even more. I don't want, I'm trying to pour my own opinion. I'm a property owner too, but I'm trying to balance, you know, what's best for the people. So I'm not jumping into anything here. And I agree. I think maybe it both.

I'm comfortable with meeting some counties where they've presented theirs.

The only thing I would do is I think we collect the money first. I don't agree with taking a guess at how much no-sex we're going to collect and doing the taxes now. I think we put the money in the bank and then we do the taxes. Well, nothing happens until we estimate it, but it still doesn't cycle.

2028. Or it could be going to 2027. If we estimated it, we could apply it to the 2027 tax bills, which goes out, but like January, February. That doesn't come. They have to be out. And I'd rather not. Me too. I'd rather it goes, in fact, to 2028.

2028.

Right.

Chairman, I think the tax relief in 245, that goes into effect no matter what, right, in January?

That is in effect right now, yes.

So people will see relief no matter what, right?

Mm-hmm. I'm glad you brought that up, Commissioner Flanagan, that this is a tax shift and not a tax cut. We had a lot of advertising from one of our candidates there that it was a big tax cut, and it certainly was not. We're just shifting it to a different sector. Any other questions or discussion on that? Thank you for putting it on the agenda, and thank you for us getting it going next week. So with that, we'll move into items from the public. We welcome your public comment. We ask that as you do, please focus on respect, clarity, and adherence to procedure while keeping your comments to three minutes or less. So that we may capture it in the minutes, please give us your name and address. While making your comment, please be concise, state your specific comment, avoid personal attacks and profanity, and follow the Chair's guidance. Remembering that we are listening but not typically engaging in back and forth dialogue during public comment, as the goal is effective communication, not debate. Anybody in the audience that would like

Just, I got a question from Bruce on this tax thing. Do we have any type of action today to make sure we have it correctly on the agenda for next meeting?

No.

Okay. We'll just be a proposed ordinance. All right. Anybody would like to make a public comment?

Yes, sir. If you'd give us your name and address, please. Well, I come to you today as Senator Randy Diver, District 31, 1715 Scott Avenue. And I want to talk about two items. One is the tax Senate bill you just talked about. and the other is the Bridge Improvement Grant. First of all, on the Senate Bill 215 for 216 that changed the caps on growth and caps on assessments, all that does is drive the mill levy up. You have the same tax ask. So there's no real tax relief there because the values will go down, but the mill levy goes up, and that's at the county level specifically. Senate Bill 96, I worked my first two years when I was in the legislature trying to implement the sales tax abilities for counties for capital improvements. Department of Revenue could not give me the exact dollars in Lawrence County outside the municipalities for sales tax. All of a sudden, when the governor's bill came in, they could. When you fill out your sales tax report that you send to the state and work in multiple counties, you don't have to break out what county it was generated in. I do in my own books. So how do they know if I'm doing that job in Heath County, Pink County, Lawrence County? So my point is be very cautious on the estimates that you have from this because it's not a perfect science. Moving on to the Ridge Improvement Grant Program, the resolution you have I think has got a lot of merit, but there should be some open discussion at the county organization level on going after some one-time funding because we have one-time revenue available this next session. And I say that because the state has a big demand on some big bridges across Missouri that they're going to be putting money into so there'll be less money available for this grant program. So the reversionary money we have now is roughly $63 million reversionary and the revenue increase. So I think part of that strategy is maybe not to look at doing that every year if it's not acceptable, but looking at when you have that kind of money coming in that you put bridge improvement grants. And it needs to increase because the cities were allowed to be in that arena several years ago and they weren't initially. So the cities are taking a big portion of that, which competes with the counties. On the township end, in some counties, with the other money we have in the other program for small structures, anything under a certain length, we continue to put money into that fund. Unfortunately, our county doesn't have many of those small structures in their inventory. We need the money in the bridge improvement grants. So I would encourage you to talk to other county commissioners and your county organization, have some flexibility as that comes forward. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you.

Anybody else like to comment?

My name is Becky Nelson. I live in Spearfish, 194-94 Winding on the Road. I have concerns about SB 96. It's been hard to find figures that we can work on. The one figure that has been, I think, presented to everybody is how much homeowners are going to save with this deal. It's been a lot harder to come up with figures regarding how much extra money it's going to cost consumers, as well as the net savings that homeowners are going to end up with after you subtract their sales tax. The figures I'm going to use come from South Dakota Searchlight, a couple of different articles they've done on it, trying to come up with some figures. I realize that the estimates are going to be pretty different depending on each household. Spending habits, household size, income plays in on how much a household spends. But I think from what I've heard, the biggest argument in favor of implementing SB 896 has been that senior citizens on fixed incomes are suffering. Property owners are suffering. Definitely, I understand it. I do want to point out that renters have also seen an increased burden due to these property taxes. We're paying them. 42% of renters in Lawrence County right now are rent burdened because of these increases. They're not going to see any relief. And truly, like you said, this is just a redistribution. Renters, the lowest earners, are going to continue paying higher property values, property taxes, And now they're going to be burdened with those of property owners. According to South Dakota Searchlight, well, okay, according to the 2005 census, 15.2% of homeowning senior citizens in Lawrence County are the ones that rely on Social Security income loan. There are programs in effect like the elderly tax freeze to help these seniors. And so I do start to question how much that demographic is actually going to benefit from raising sales tax. South Dakota Searchlight did say that currently a moderately spending family would have to have a home valued about $95,000 to break even under this current tax structure. That's including the SB 245. They calculate that a house will have to be valued closer to $393,000 before the family actually breaks even on the overall tax burden if we do implement SB 96. So that's almost $400,000. Anybody owning a property worth less than $400,000 is not going to break even with this deal. 45% of the housing inventory in Lawrence County, according to realtor.com, is valued at under $400,000. Okay. 55% of the homeowning portion of our community are going to benefit. 45% of them will not. as well as the 50%, Spearfish has almost exactly 50% of its housing is rent or occupied. That puts us at like 72% of our community members, our local families who aren't going to benefit from SB 96, from the numbers I've seen. Obviously you guys probably have different numbers. One thing I was surprised to learn when I was doing my research is that rental properties are already being taxed at a higher district mill levy than owner occupied properties, up to 30% in some cases. This means that renters in our community really do contribute significantly to the property tax burden. And it really does seem pretty wrong to try to put that of the homeowners on our plate as well. They think it'll be bad for our economy. Like you said, SB 96 is not a tax relief bill. It is a tax redistribution bill. It's designed to take from the poorest South Dakotans and give to the richest of the South Dakotans. I do know that tourism is supposed to be playing in. I want to point out the fact that the cost of living for local families is going to increase by the exact same amount, no matter how many tourists do pay in. I'm glad you kind of pumped the brakes on this. It did get forced through pretty quickly in Pennington and Mead counties. I've seen articles come out after the fact. There has been some uproar. Obviously a lot of people are pretty happy about it. An article in the Rapid City Journal from July of this year titled, Pennington County sales tax increase shifts property tax burden onto low and middle income residents. I think probably said it best to quote them directly. South Dakota already has a low overall tax burden, including favorable property taxes in the top 10 nationwide. Charging more to those living for stability in our community only risks more economic distress in the future. I think that's pretty obvious. If implemented, SB 96 will raise the standard of living for the majority of middle earners in our community, not just the 50% of renters, The 42%, 45% of homeowners who also won't be breaking even, we're paying this tax with no promise of investment in public good in return. 72%, don't get anything in return. Mary Fitzgerald has told me in a few conflicting statements that the half cent shouldn't be noticeable from my pocket. We're doing this to save seniors, keep them in their homes. It's going to make homes more affordable somehow. The statements she has given me specifically are really conflicting. I don't see how $500 out of the budget of my family is considered not noticeable, but a $547 savings on somebody's $300,000 house is the difference that's going to save them. It means nothing to my family. That same family is going to be saved by that same amount. My final concern is that the draft ordinance does not define how the property tax will, property relief, excuse me, will occur. Since taxes are tied to the value of a home, the $5 million property could get 20 times the tax relief that a $250,000 property could get. I'm going to argue that this bill is not being pushed because of community concern for the elderly. If it were, the number of renters in our community who are also seniors and being burned by these property taxes would be part of the discussion. Critics in here have referred to SB 96 as a reverse Robin Hood tax. I think that's very fitting. Again, we're taking from the lowest 70% of our community and giving to the upper 30%. It's been pretty shocking. seeing some of the gaslighting, some of the pushing of inflated estimates regarding property tax savings. South Dakota Searchlight did estimate savings were going to be quite a bit lower than the form that I've seen circulating. I think it really helped the public to have more information and maybe some solid figures. But I also agree that taking it to a vote, maybe by referendum, would be valuable to the community. A lot of people The lower end property owners have no idea that this isn't actually going to benefit them. And I think letting the public make the choice would be important.

Thank you. Anybody else like to make any comments today? Anybody online? Like the last most of our online. All right, with that, we'll close the public comment period. It is from the public. Do the commissioners have anything they'd like to bring forth this time? I don't. Okay. So with that, we'll move into budget discussions. Stephanie Crago is here, along with some of her board, I assume, or at least some support. Appreciate you waiting. Sorry we took a little longer here today, but. But, you know, it was very educational and hopefully entertaining for you all to sit here.

Yes, my name is Stephanie Corrego and I'm the executive director of the Scripps Senior Center. Thank you for putting me on the agenda today. I do want to introduce who I have with me today. We have Senator Randy Diver. He's on our steering committee. And Doug Schmidt, who's the chair of our steering committee. And then we have our president, Ginger Childers, who's also on our steering committee. So I'm going to pass this over to Doug.

I threw the chalk straw. This is our concept. Fairfax Senior Center started in 1972. Our first building was built in 1980 and has been added on several times. Currently we have 500 plus members and We grow every day. We offer lots of opportunities for our senior citizens. We have learned that 25% of population in Spearfish are senior citizens. That came from the Spearfish Economic Development Association. So, plus we offer lots of opportunities for our older citizens whether it's eating caramel rolls on Thursday to playing cards, music, dancing. They just do a lot of things. Our citizens are, they consider our center a home away from home. A lot of times that's the only place they go. And they have grown, they've grown very, that's gone necessary for them to be there. It gives them outside contact. They aren't by themselves at home. So what we're doing, we started our campaign in January, and we've currently raised $570,000. As you can see from the handout, we estimate the building will cost $3.5 million. We're out there beating the payment, looking for assistance, and we're coming to you to ask for that contribution of $100,000. We plan to build within three to four years, again, depending on how our revenues come in. And we're just trying to make it better for Spiritfish. We've had some technical problems with our building. whether it's air conditioning or pipes bursting or just not operating correctly. So we have a building that's, you know, what, 50 years old or so, and it's starting to show its wear and tear. So we appreciate you guys listening to us and welcome any opportunity for any questions you might have of us. And you're always welcome to come there. and have coffee and have caramel roll on Thursdays. They're the best in the state. So again, we appreciate you listening to us. Is there any questions for us? So this new building you're putting on the same footprint? No, we own the grass to the south of the building. There's what? Right, there are one and a half acres back in, we have one and a half acres across the borders of Nevada.

The church is in front, it's to the south of their building and to the east instead.

It's by the underpass, okay? We own that acre and a half. Okay. And then our idea is to build that and sell the other acre that we have up there with our current building, okay? So, We've thought it out, but we've got a bunch of rookies trying to run this operation. So we're trying to go out and visit people and reach out to a lot of organizations to help us put this together.

Sorry, you said you had rookies running the operation. I said, I was thinking all the veterans are moving on.

I'm talking about me and Ginger and everybody.

Oh, here's, where did he hit?

Well, just a couple of follow-up, guys. You've been through this before, and there's other people coming in and asking for money. You've seen it with the opera houses, you've seen it with the mining museum. Handling center. Yeah, several of them. And so with that model in mind, I know that you give annually a certain amount from the senior center. And if you have some money that you could give above and beyond that into the building fund annually, until we get this funded, it would be very nice if we could do that. Furthermore, if we could get a pledge of a larger amount out of other funding sets as a gold severance tax fund, that when we reach a certain dollar figure, that number is committed to a certain percentage of our budget, that that money is then pledged to that construction when it starts. That's where you can come up with some larger funds. So those two combination may get us to the total or beyond the $100,000 we're asking for. But as we see money coming in from different people, it gives you more momentum for your capital plan. We see the counties participating even a small amount annually. With that big pledge in mind, it gives us momentum to get this done. And when half of your population roughly is in that city, you can imagine how the percentage of seniors that are in the city.

So I'll just add that to it. We have a board that's all volunteer. We have an executive director and a part-time accountant. That's how we operate. And we do, she does very well in keeping us above board. So again, we appreciate your time and thank you very much for listening to us. Thank you. Thanks for coming up.

Mine was with me.

You got mine stashed somewhere? I didn't give them back to you because everything is updated on the screen up here unless you want to have them. I can surely grab them if you want it. Is everybody else here? Yes, please.

That's with my site. Those don't have to do much.

It's not the same. Thank you. I don't need stuff reprinted. I just usually take the main stuff and then I can get the updates. Thank you. But I like to doodle. Oh, I forgot to bring my . What do you do? Okay, we're ready.

I will set it up. So you graciously allow Pat to purchase the Tahoe this year. Pat has found that it would be a good idea to have lights and sirens on it, and you'd like to have that done by the rally. I think you're down with your autopsies this year by quite a bit, but that varies. That varies. You're never going to know. So you don't necessarily have any money set aside for that purchase for this year. So the question then is, well, two questions. Should he budget for it for next year, or is he allowed to go ahead and get that purchase and then see at the end of the year if he needs a budget supplement? Is that important with you, what you understand? Yeah, that's correct. And so does that make sense? Otherwise, he's going to have to budget for it for next year.

I'm confused on lights and sirens. I am too, because we talked about that when you purchased the vehicle. That wasn't included in the budget last year.

No, we did discuss that along with that item, which is the radio for the vehicle. That's the bigger expenditure of everything. When we talked and got approved, from the numbers that I looked at to pitch the vehicle to when we finally got the approval and the ability to buy it, Those numbers increased, like the vehicle price went up a couple thousand dollars. The radio equipment, that went up some. And so there was an increase just in the time period from when we first initially talked about the vehicle to when we actually could buy it. And even like the equipment that went inside of it, I had to wait till I got the vehicle to know the exact specifications of the height of the vehicle and such, so I knew what, because there's different types of the gurneys that we use, depending on how high the vehicles are in prices. Everything kind of is, everything else is that all reflected a price increase there. The main purpose for the lights and the siren is not so that I can drive fast to get somewhere. My calls generally, my reason to get someplace in as quickly as I can is there's a few things. One, quite often I have EMS there on scene waiting for me. Sooner I get there, the sooner they can be relieved to go about their duties. Same way with law enforcement. They always wait till I'm on scene. And generally, they always help me do my removals and that. the quicker I can get to a call, the faster I can let those people get back to their duties. And also the thing with having, especially if I'm in someone's home and the center in general, I get my business taken care of, the less traumatic it is on that family for being there. I spent nearly 30 years in a patrol car and I am not interested in getting this so I can drive fast somewhere. I've had my fill of that through my career in law enforcement. But it will help me quite a lot, especially, you know, Lawrence County is a little more unique than like some of the flat land, wide open rural counties. Trying to get through the Spearfish Canyon or a lot of these places, especially in the summertime, is a challenge. that the lights would help me maneuver through traffic a little better. Also, for roadside, having additional lighting on the vehicle is a safety concern for not only myself, but others around. So that's kind of the primary emphasis for the lights and power. Radio, just for communication so I can stay in touch with law enforcement. and dispatching that when I need to.

Pat, did you say for the lights and sirens it was about $3,000? That is for the radio? That's about $2,000.

The radio itself is about $6,000. The radios are very expensive. But the radio itself is just a few dollars under $6,000 for that. I had got a quote from Motorola on the Rapid City on that. that Paul Thompson helped me with. It's one of the resources that he uses. And then the lights should be under 2,000. We can go through with that. And the other thing too is I'm going to make sure that the vehicle meets the requirements of state statute regarding the use of the lights and such. to make sure we don't get crossed.

You can't use red and blue, right? It's either for non-emergency or I don't know.

Yeah, there's certain exceptions where you can get authority from the Department of Transportation to do that, to use the different colors. It's actually kind of interesting that the people that are able to authorize blue lights on a vehicle, the list that's in the statutory authority to do that. But I would make sure that we did that appropriately.

Go ahead. I just wondered if you said that you'd like to see this prior to the rally. If we did do some type of approval here, would you be able to get that done before the rally?

It's going to be a big push. I've talked to Chad and the license and that. I don't know what his, I haven't visited with him for a couple of weeks now, so I don't know what his schedule's at. It would probably be a stretch to get it done by the rally just right now, but it would help me to have it, you know, rather than waiting until the next budget cycle to have this approved. How do you communicate now without radio? My phone. Yeah. depending on where I go, that's spotty. I had a call here a few months back up in Hills, and I had to find a hilltop to get up to, and the record driver was there also, and we found each other, but we couldn't find where we needed to go where law enforcement was on this particular call. But we did, we manage to get to where we could make that communication and then there's you know a lot of the times i'll get dispatch will call me and uh when i'm en route to a call and ask you know where i'm at because law enforcement's on scene waiting and there's times right either they can't get hold of me or we just have to do it through the cell phone right now i do have a portable radio but it's I'm very, very limited on where I can get out.

So a total of 8,000? Yes.

It's got to be in the budget.

Yeah. If my year continues the way it is right now, my number, as Bruce mentioned, my number of calls is down a little bit. and my number of autopsies is down a little. The unfortunate part of that is I have no way to guarantee that's going to stay steady. It could change in the next five minutes. But right now, I would have, in my entire budget, I would have the money to cover it. But as Drew's mentioned, depending on what happens, the rally can, rally can really influence what happens. And so it would just be a matter of being able to use money now to proceed with this before January and then with the understanding that I may be back in October asking for a supplement if things really turn upside down.

So what do we, anybody have any comments?

I just think it's quite unsafe. No, it's definitely needed. I think it's much needed.

We've already approved the lights, haven't we?

The lights and the radio? No, it was, we talked in

Brenda could help me a little bit on that too. We got, I believe it was 68, roughly 68,000 is what we were approved. The vehicle itself was 61 and some change. Then the equipment going into it was, well, just like the Gurney itself, that's about $4,000, $4,500 for that. So those things, Prices jumped up there. I did not anticipate at the time that the radio was going to be $6,000. I was a little setback by that.

But you had included the lights and the radio in the back.

Yeah.

That's what I originally thought.

That's what I thought. The presentation that I had included. Right. Especially the lights and the radio. I don't know if we got into much discussion. I don't remember a radio discussion. I remember the lights. The lights were, the radio was not.

So I guess my question then is, do we need a motion to approve that? Or is that up to the department head of how it uses the money this month?

I guess if you want something solid, you could do a motion or you could just with the understanding, if I come back in November and say at the July 30th meeting, you know, or...

It would be primarily if I end up getting a large number of autopsies that I have to do, or if my total number of calls get back to normal. The last few years, we've been running close to about 100 calls a year. Right now, if I continue at the rate I'm at, I'll probably end up around 85 calls. We know that'll be down. So we need a motion to approve the expenditure now with the possibility that we may have a supplement later. And then we remove that $8,500 from the budget from next year's request.

So moved. Second. Okay, it's been moved by Flanagan, seconded by Ewing. to approve the, you want to go 8,000 or 8,500?

I'll just do 85. I think I'm pretty confident I'll do well under that.

Is there a technical term for those lights and sirens? Is that what I call it?

Radio and emergency equipment. Emergency safety equipment. And then we can take that 85 out of the budget request on this one.

So the motion is for $8,500 for emergency equipment, including radio and lights, and then that would be removed from the 2027 budget. Any questions or discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay. Okay.

Thank you.

Pat, you're still able to use the autopsy work from Rapid City, or you're having to go with that?

We got notified here that they have found another forensic pathologist to come in. He's not here. He's coming from out of country. Hoping that stays moving forward. That they're actually supposed to be here. Actually, they're supposed to be here in two weeks, I believe, is what I was originally told by Dr. Hoppe. So that could affect your travel expense for your budget? Yeah, that would help out tremendously there. There may still be a time where I'd have to go down there if he's gone or whatnot.

Yeah, there are options for the college, isn't there? Yeah.

The year ago, it looked like a very real possibility. The year ago was an absolute possibility because they had nobody lined up. They could not find it. Finding a forensic pathologist is extremely difficult. There's very few of them. Nobody gets into that work. Part of it is because of the education they have to go through, the additional education. But yeah, they have, last I heard, and hopefully it's still moving in that direction, they have hired another forensic pathologist to take over when Dr. Hoppe retires.

So I'm very grateful for that. Your vehicle's been working well?

It has been working very well. It saves me time. i've got everything in there so i don't have to transfer from my personal vehicle to this one and then happen to forget something or miss something but no it's it's working exceptionally well i really appreciate that it's been a great asset thank you can i visit with pat just one more second before we move forward so

we moved your supplies to 8,500. So if you remove the whole, you won't have anything for supplies. So my thought is you still need to leave it at 2,000. And because we raised it to 8,500.

So if you take, if you remove that, you don't have anything for supplies.

So we raised it 6,500. And so we would need to leave that at 2,000. Does that make sense, everybody? Of course you do.

I'll make sure the public will get some. I got plenty here.

So on Pat's professional, or his supplies, he has 8,500 requested for 2027. So we raised that to 8,500, so we need to leave 2,000 in there. For general supplies, yeah. For just supplies, if we take it all. budget request for supplies would be 2 000 not 35 is everybody okay with that yeah okay all right i just want to make sure sorry If that makes sense.

Well to start with, for me, if you're ready.

We are.

Okay. I gave every one of you this little handout. First of all, I'd like to just, thanks for your time and consideration of this budget. Appreciate you guys understanding the importance of the highway system and the role we all play in maintaining it because of your support and continued support of the Highway Department. We're able to kind of keep the traveling public safe and do it at the best possible savings to the citizens of Lawrence County. I got this little handout I put together. It's just going to be a quick breakdown of the items that we have in our budget that you already have in your spreadsheet. But I'd like to highlight a few of the things that we've done that are either items that have been increased that have been reduced and items that have stayed the same. And kind of a little explanation of why. Just to start with our staff promotions in the Highway Department, we are budgeting for three individuals to have a grade race for 2027. They've all performed to the point where we feel they deserve some sort of a race. So we are budgeting for those three positions. If you go on the second page there, the items that remain unchanged for 27, this is over 26, and that's our tires, oil, grease, parts and supplies, track sealer, diesel fuel, culverts, pavement markings, signs, our drug and alcohol testing, travel, and radio replacement and repair. All of those items have stayed the same for the last couple years. The total of them items, 721,500. The next line item are the items that we reduced. You can see where we broke those out in 24, 25, 26, and 27. Our capital asset we reduced by $1,080,000 this year. If you remember right last year, we took a lot of our line items we reduced so we could buy graders this year. It's a pretty large expense. Instead of just asking or budgeting for that, as a standalone project, we actually reduced a lot of our expenses with the assumption, with the condition that we'd be putting that money back. But that is, it's a huge reduction. We brought down our capital asset, our ask for this year's $400,000, and that is to purchase a truck. We did experience, in our five year plan, we were planning on buying a loader this year, but we, We had an accident at the Simon pit. The Simon motor operator ran into one of our trucks and they told him. So we got the truck back and we got a check for $63,000, I believe, to repair that truck. And we are going to repair the truck, but we are planning on changing that into a chlorine truck. So for that reason, we're asking We kind of readjusted our five-year plan for equipment. We're asking to purchase another one of the trucks with the Kubota system on it. It'll have snow equipment, but we'll also be able to put a fifth load plate on it. We'll be able to haul a belly dump trailer for gravel, or we'll be able to put a dump body on it and use it as a dump truck. I think our last one of those we purchased last year was in that $360,000 range. We are anticipating a slight increase on the price, We are budgeting $400,000 for that system. The other reduction item that we have here is our de-icing product because the last two winters have been pretty favorable for us. We still have quite a stockpile of sand and salt on hands. I anticipate that in 2027 we're not going to have to buy that much. So we did reduce that by $10,000. We also reduced our engineering costs just for the fact that And if you follow along on that other page, our engineering demands for projects have increased, but we are also adding those into the standalone projects. We're adding the engineering fee as part of the paving project or part of any bridge projects. We're already including that in there. So we're just keeping a small amount of money, 125,000 off to the side for any kind of project or any kind of engineering that we need over and above for an emergency service. but we did decrease that by $10,000. And moving on to the items that we did increase, and again, this comes back to a lot of the items we talked about last year. This is where we reduced funding to these items to purchase the graders, but we're putting those monies back. Some of them are, we're not putting it back to the level they were. We still have them somewhat reduced, but to start with our bridge construction and repair, Last year was $975,000. This year we budgeted for $2 million because we have two bridges on the Nemo Road being built. I want to make sure that you're aware that we budgeted because the way the big grant is implemented, we have to pay up front for the bridge. We have to budget for that so we have the spending authority to pay for that bridge. Then we are reimbursed by the state. That $2 million does not reflect the revenue source that we're going to get from the big program, which is $1,470,158. That is money that we will have as revenue in 2027. But we still have to budget for the amount of the cost of the bridge because we have to pay for it out of our budget. So just so you're aware, it looks like we're asking for a lot of money for the bridges, but we are getting 80% of that comes back to us in the grant. So that gets reflected on the living room page. Our next project is our paving projects. We did put that back. We reduced that in 26. We went from 25, which is 2,270,000 to 1,800,000. We're putting it back up to 2,250,000. So it's still slightly less than 25, but that will allow us to get back on track with our chip ceiling projects. crack ceiling projects and continue on with our paving of the BMO road. We kind of suspended all of our chip ceiling in 26, you know, for that reason, to buy these graders. This will get us back on track for 27. We are putting the money back also in our utilities. We raised that 10,000. That puts that money back to where it was in 25. Mag chloride we reduced from 25 from 790 to 550,000 in anticipation of a greater purchase. And we are asking to put that back to 700,000. So still a reduction from 25, but an increase from 26. Gravel is the same story. We're increasing that from 500,000 to 700,000 to put that money back, but still lower than it was in 25 by 15,000. Gasoline prices, we share with the sheriff's office, we share with emergency management, everybody uses gas. We are budgeting 125,000 for that. Last year we budgeted 100,000. Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to diesel, fuel, and gasoline. I don't know where it's going. We are increasing that by 25,000. Our cutting edges, we are going to put back to 35,000, which is still $5,000 lower than our historical price of 40,000. And I did for the first time ever that I can remember, we are increasing our office supply budget because of our new software program. It is going to be a higher cost than it has been in the past. So I did increase that. I doubled it from 5,000 to $10,000. I don't feel that will still be enough to cover our office supplies, but I guess it will at least be something towards our new software. And I'm going to tell you right now, too, that we have another deal that's coming up. Bruce has been on the meeting we had with the DOT the other day. We've been having some conversations on that building over there at Exeter. We may experience, I have not budgeted for this. I don't even know where to begin to budget for this, but they have gone forward. We are expecting, and I just don't know the timeframe when we'll get it, but they have appraisers that are going to appraise that property. And then it could be a dollar. It could be 10 million. I don't know. I have no idea. So I have nothing in the budget for that. But after speaking with Mike Carlson the other day, They're not very concerned about the time frame. If they come up with a price for us at the end of this year or in 27, we have a budget for that. I guess my takeaway was they're willing to work with us at any time as far as a payment method, what the payment will be and when we pay it. I think we're pretty open on that. I don't think we're going to have to worry about it in 27, but I want you to be aware that in 27, or it could be as soon as this year, I don't even know when, but we might have a dollar amount for that property at exit 10. Just so you're aware. And I know you two are on that kind of committee, so as soon as I hear something and they have a meeting set up, you will know. And that is it for what I have on the highway department. We also have, Tim is here for the buildings and grounds portion, but that's on Page three, or page four, I'm sorry, you can go through that. I don't know if you have any other real questions on the breakdown of your spreadsheet, but I'd be entertained, any questions that you have.

So John, you've bumped the utilities back up 10,000. Are you going to run short on money for utilities this year?

Is it going to be pretty tight? I think it's going to be close, yeah. I think right now we're looking at about 50% right now, so it's about half a year to go. you're about on target there and then mag chloride you dropped that down last year did you just cover less miles or did you put less product well a little of both i let me rephrase that we did not cover less miles anything we're doing more miles we're uh we're doing a less less application i also made sure and i know this maybe is a little sneaky on my behalf but i made sure my tanks were full at the end of last year so going into 26 i started with full tanks So I budgeted for less, but I made sure we had plenty on hand to get us started. So we're going to be fine with the chloride we have, but I would be more comfortable in 27 than having the ability to purchase the same or nearly the same amount that we have in the past. Chloride is an expense that it's a love it or hate it kind of a deal, but I'm going to tell you, as long as I've been here, that it will save your gravel. The inconvenience to the public is far outweighed by the benefits that it provides. It keeps the rock on the road. When you go down a road and you see dust in the air, that's the best part of your gravel going away. People don't understand that. They think the rock and the piece of the pebbles are the best part. The fines are what hold all that in place. And when that's flying away, your gravel's not far behind. It's certainly worth it. I think our county is... A lot of counties around us are now starting to implement a way more stringent chlorinating program because our roads are far better than our surrounding neighbors. Well, you've got the best roads in the state. A lot of our counties around us are implementing larger chloride programs.

Right now you're trying to re-gravel roads every nine years. Do you think that that could be extended as with the use of the backboard?

absolutely is going to be extended. And we're on to the point where we're, our gravel budget, we're going to, we are now experiencing roads where we don't need to gravel to the extent that we were. We can stretch our gravel quite a bit by, we don't have to do four inch lifts anymore. You know, we came out of the time where we had a lot of really poor roads. We let a lot of roads get prepared and then that took a lot It's kind of like you never change oil in your car. Yeah, you save all the money on changing your oil, but when your engine blows up, you've got some real problems. That's where we were with gravel roads. We were saving a lot of money by not graveling roads, but by the time our roads became impassable, it cost us a lot of money and a lot of time to get those back in condition, in good condition, and we are there now. Our roads are in very good condition, so we will be scaling back, and we have for the last two years. Our gravel budget has been lowered every year for the last several years. So I know this year we lowered it a lot to purchase the graders, but we're going to put that money back so we at least have the funds to do the gravel that we're planning on doing. To gravel 20 miles of road every year is what our plan is. So we didn't do that much this year. We cut it back to about 15 miles. next year we're planning on going back to our 20 or 25 whatever we have to do but we may only do two inches of gravel on some of those roads some of the higher volume roads will require more gravel just because they we've got gravel roads that got over a thousand cars a day on them they require a lot more gravel a lot more maintenance i think that that is warranted putting that money back into that budget and i think it would be adequate amount of money to do what we're doing

Yeah, that mag acts like a binder. It just holds it all together.

Absolutely.

Any other highway questions before we move on to the building and grounds? How are you coming on the home state?

I'm still waiting on one placement, but it doesn't sound like we're going to get it. You're struggling getting an easement on the, I think it's the end gasser property. So if that's the case, the engineer is now looking at doing some sheet piling along that edge so we can do our work within the right of way.

Good. So that would be the option. I thought you were going to go to the north side with most of it.

Even to the north side, we have to do, even more so on the north side, we'll need to have some sort of sheet filing, because that's a much deeper.

Right, but those individuals, you were able to work with them, right?

I think so, yeah.

Okay, so I knew that the one was going to be possible.

And as soon as I get any new information, I will make sure that it's passed. All right, thank you. Right now, I'm still waiting. And Tim is here. As far as buildings and grounds, We're asking for a couple of things, but I'll let him answer any of your questions. But I guess we're finding out now that we have more data on the new building than the Public Safety Center, and then the data that we've accumulated on these facilities here with the use being scaled back, we're getting a little better idea what it's costing for the utilities and the maintenance and repairs. we do have a reduction in those areas. We have a reduction in utilities, we have a reduction in repairs, and then we do have a reduction in contracts. But I want to point out that the reason there was a reduction in contracts is because we removed the phone. Tim's budget always covered the phone contracts. That has now been switched over to the IT department. And then we also removed out of this proposal elevator contract because he's got a standalone elevator project that is one of the items that we're going to be talking about as an increased item. The fact that those items are no longer a part of this year's, the 27 budget, contract budget, there was a $22,500 reduction. So his capital assets that we're looking at, we're asking We're asking for your guys' permission to purchase another pickup truck for Tim's department because frankly that operating two different locations and basically two different crews at many times, it's becoming a hindrance for him to have to drive back and forth and get people and get items to different locations. I think it's warranted that the fact that we have a second site and we have many times two projects, two locations going on at the same time, he's needing another piece of equipment. We originally budgeted a whole nother person for that facility and we've been able to get by without that, but I think a piece of equipment, a truck or another, something to haul material back and forth and tools from site to site is needed. That's in our budget for capital assets, Last year, we didn't even have a capital asset purchase. So there is an increase there. And then our elevator upgrade that we just talked about, the elevator over here in the courthouse, it's kind of been to the point where it's needed a lot of repair for a long time. It's pretty antiquated. The control system on it, it's no longer serviceable. Did I ask you a question?

The elevator in the courthouse is the same as the one in our old jail. It's a hydraulic cylinder. Yep. Same brand.

Is that where the problems are? It's more in the control part of it, not the hydraulics. The hydraulics are still good on that one?

Yep.

Okay.

Thank you. Tim, like the controls now are sort of like analog controls, right? And then you want to put like digital, like things actually are moving. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of scary.

If I showed it to you, you probably wouldn't ride the elevator. I don't. But it's an upgrade that Otis can do to them. They do it all the time. Obviously, it's expensive, but it definitely needs to be done.

We're getting to the point where we've been kicking that down the road too long. So the cylinder and everything, it's not leaking oil like the other one was? No. Okay. Can they repair that one if it goes down?

It can, yep. Because this one had issues to where it was almost impossible to repair it, wasn't it?

Yeah. This one, we lost the hydraulic cylinder and it goes down in the ground, so it's a pretty lengthy repair for this one. But yeah, they can repair that one. Okay. But it's in good shape. The hydraulic system's in good shape.

It's the controls that are not repairable or serviceable. That's how we need to run. But it is a $157,000 upgrade, so yeah. That's what I was concerned. That's an expensive upgrade. I wanted to make sure that the elevator was going to last a while to switch.

Yeah, there you go. Yeah, and they're open building.

It's one of the reasons we didn't put one in the new public safety building. They're proprietary and they got you. You can't do anything with them. So they kind of got you, they set their price and either don't have an elevator or you pay it. Danny's not going to do this work, is he? No. The guy that we had servicing our elevators, he's gotten older and basically phased out his business now. So we're probably going to be looking for a new vendor to do our preventative maintenance on him.

Any other questions? Well, overall, you can just see that on that bottom line there, the last page, the Highway Department is a 9.82% increase, $791,853 increase, but that's the overall budget that, again, does not reflect that revenue source from that picture. So in reality, the Highway Department budget is actually less. And Government Buildings is, an increase of 150,548, which is a 13% increase.

I would appreciate your guys' consideration in approving it. The shop at the Public Safety Service Center, is that all done now? Yep.

It comes in there, their equipment's in there, and we poured a pad, the ILE department and the Buildings and grounds employees got together and we poured a pad out in front of it, so it's, I think that was pretty much the last thing. He's got to hook up a gas line. Yep, the gas line's the only thing we have left.

We have to put a tap in the existing building so we can hook, the line's all ran, it's ready to be hooked up. So we got that left to do for our heat, but yet everything else is done.

Highway department, only a couple of guys, and we dug 400 feet of sewer line

And then we dug the water line in ourselves too, so we saved a big chunk of money doing that. So that worked out good.

Yeah. Thank you, John. Thank you. Thank you.

Go right to the Sheriff's Department, Terry.

And what department are we going to start in? Save the- The best for last. Save the rest for last.

Oh, it's a big bundle.

It's going to go quickly next time. Because of the consolidation, we're literally working on some of these numbers. But we'll get to that. My hope is that you'll find the majority of the budget that we've presented to be very familiar. And I hope to kind of get through it quicker than what maybe I would normally run through the numbers. I'm happy to stop at any point and answer questions, but we've got a lot to talk about with regards to a PSAP consolidation. And so if it feels like I'm going too fast on getting a shot under the table and we'll slow down. But that's kind of the hope that I've got. The first couple of pages are what you see from me every single year. One of our commissioners benefits that maybe hasn't seen it before. Each of these budgets have three sections to it. You'll hear me refer to section one or section two, section three. In short order, section one is salary. Section two is the main core. of your submitted budget, and section three is typically your bigger items. You'll see the example there with the red marks, and that takes us right to Department 210. Department 210 is very straightforward this year. At the end of the day, some things went up, some things went down. We picked up an extra bill from Paul Thompson this year. It was about $3,800 per batteries that at one point his budget reflected in towers. And I never asked him why. I was so happy to accommodate. He doesn't want to pay for those anymore, and he wanted that to come into our budget. So that's an example of an area where it went up a little bit. But at the end of the day, if you switch over to this page right here, you'll see that That's the breakdown that I try to offer nearly every year with every department. In 2027, it's actually reflected the third lowest budget that we have submitted since many years now, and it's going back to maybe the third lowest since 19 years. So I feel pretty good about it. Those are pretty solid numbers, but not a lot of wiggle room. but unless I have any specific questions on 210, I'm happy to answer. I'd like to jump into 211. 211 is considered the sheriff's office proper. Sheriff's office in and of itself has got five different budgets, two of which are self-funded, as it were. But this is where most of our stuff comes from. So it's perception one specifically In 211, we're talking about pay. I don't raise the holiday overtime pay every single year. I just kind of let it ride as it's proving to be enough. I'm sure you can imagine that as you gentlemen offer raises to our employees, at some point I've got to make an adjustment because time and a half for overtime or double time and a half on a holiday when we've got a lot of folks that have to work those hours, it starts crowding in too close. So that's what you're seeing there. So they had to raise that by $500. I don't anticipate, regardless of what you do with the salaries this year and next, I doubt you'll see it go up for the next two or three years, but we just try to stay a little bit ahead of it. Detectives went up a little bit more. Their call volume has increased Like I discussed last year, you might recall last year I requested an extra detective, and then we closed it trying to help everybody out with the caution that I was going to come back again this year. I went to those folks, as I did last year, and I asked them if they could hang in there for three-quarters of the year to help our budget out a little bit. They said they could. Their call volume went up 39.44% since 2022. I can throw a lot of numbers at you. When it really comes down to it, the type of investigations that they do in the modern era with all of the IT, it just creates more of a need for subpoenas and more time involved. It's not purely driven on the number. The number is enough that it would sustain the request to add another detective, but that doesn't tell the whole story. When we break it all down, the largest reason why I'm bringing this before you today is their quality of life. Our detectives are the last vestibule of county employees that are literally on call 50% of their lives. We corrected those problems about 14 years ago or so with patrol deputies. We have them down to, they're being on call about 12.5% of their work life. These detectives are in a different class. There's a lot of pressure on those folks. And to be as frank as I can, we had three detectives on the Lawrence County Sheriff's Office starting, roughly speaking, about 1996. And we ran it that way until somewhere around 2008, and we reallocated that position for administrative needs. That's what worked at the time, and it's time to go back that's where we're at there, at a quarter detective for the year, that would add about $34,461 for a pleasure.

So that's adding a detective in the fourth quarter, or is that a quarter time for the whole year?

No, you're right the first time. You're adding it. We're going to hold on until as long as we can, and then add it, and then forevermore, that will be part of our programs. Do you hire from one of them for For that position, I would. And what we've done in the past, if you were to just break down our chain of command, we have a fair number of sergeants, but it's not just all driven by whether or not you directly supervise people. That's one part of the equation, but the other part of the equation is how much responsibility you carry. In this particular example, both detectives that we presently have are sergeants, and they don't directly supervise people, but they carry a pretty heavy load. on behalf of the citizens. The one that I'm requesting this year, that would be a deputy. They would not get a promotion that would go along with it. So in our terms, we would call that TDY. It's a temporary duty assignment. So it might be such that we filter people through, but regardless, it's an additional person. Moving on to section two, again, those core items. The big standout there is utility. You've heard it from And the new building carries a fair amount of utility costs. And in our example, utility had to be raised to $16,000 to impart over the phones. I don't see the need to try to sit down with a calculator every month and figure out what Paul Thompson generated in terms of a bill. It makes sense to me that regardless of who you are, you're making a phone call from the county building. It'll come underneath the sheriff's office. budget. So that's the race there. There is another item and it's the first. From this point in our discussion, we're going to have to have an ebb and flow where we're going to talk a little bit about 2026 and we're going to talk a little bit about 2027 with specific regard to the PSAP consolidation. And this is the first area under computer supply where it would reveal itself. Now, this is not actually in the budget that was proposed. Here's kind of something that's been going on for the past several months. So part of this consolidation has got to be the records management system. This system is the system that the county sheriff's office maintains in its core value. In other words, we own the system and then we, in effect, we rent out use of the system to the municipalities. And this is the deal that you saw in 2019 where I bartered with the the records management system to offer a pretty good deal for lead PD, deadwood PD, and whitewood PD. Now we need to try to bring on spearfish in that same system. And it's got some particularities because of the sheer volume of their data that we need to address. So we thought we were going along pretty good. About two weeks ago, which as you know, that's over a month after we had already submitted our budget, we found out from our records management system folks that we need a new server in order to be able to handle the volume of use. That server comes at a cost of $60,000. The maintenance fee on the server is an additional $15,000 every year. I can tell you that we've had Greg involved. Bruce has been involved. We've had a number of conversations. As I said, we were still having those conversations, 6 or 6.30 last night. And here's the bottom line. You'll hear when we get to 225 how I intend to address this particular bill in 2026. In 2027, that's going to be most fairly a county bill. I know money's tight. Here's what I'm willing to try. The best case scenario for me is that we add $15,119 to the budget. If you don't feel like you can do that, I'm 100% willing to try to squeeze it out somewhere within our budget. What I can tell you is I can't promise that I can find it. We do awful good on our budget. We budget every single day of the year, and I feel confident that I can come up with at least half of it. But a line item will run in the red next year, so we'll have to focus on the bottom line, which is perfectly legal. That's what I'll throw in your direction. If that's what you want me to do, I think we'll do pretty good at it. I don't know that we'll get all the way home, but I think we'll do pretty good. Any questions on that but now? For section two, you're going to hear a catchphrase that we've become kind of fond of. Moving into this area, you see that historically, It went up marginally. The majority of that, gentlemen, is something that we now call the consequence of our success. You're going to hear that in quite a little bit in just a second or two. In Section 3, if you recall, moving up into the new facility, we added a transport van. And, you know, to keep the costs to a point that was at least palatable. That meant that we didn't buy patrol vehicles in that particular year. All our resources went in the van's direction. Now we're trying to play catch-up, and that's the reason for the request to purchase for. You see the numbers in front of you. I don't know exactly what those vehicles are going to cost. I don't know exactly what our trade-in is going to be, but by God's grace, somehow I keep coming up with a number, and it seems to be all close, and I believe that to be a similar representation. I think that's what we need. Moving into 212, unless anybody's got some questions on 211. 212. Moderate adjustments were made on the corrections officers over time in holiday pay. I've explained that with 211. It's the same scenario. At a certain point when folks are getting raises, that has a big effect on time and a half and double time. The one number that increased most significantly in Section 1 is part-time pay. So I'll introduce you to what I call ALSOs, A-L-S-O. So as you know, it's kind of a big deal for us that our minimum staffing in the new facility, regardless of the number of inmates that are up there, is three. We can run that facility with three. But you also know that we're running that facility with a lot more inmates than what we had projected. As a result of that, we can still run it with three, but what makes their life much easier is if we bring in part-time employees and so that we can get rid of an also. So for example, I said, you're a corrections officer and these are your responsibilities. Oh, and I also need you to take care of sick call. And that's going to be two more hours out of your day. So we bring a part-timer in to take care of that also makes their life a lot easier. and we can tolerate the higher numbers. It's a small price to pay, and you'll see at the end that there's still a lot of good news for us to focus on. In section two, here again, we put the numbers in front of you, and the next two pages, we've got a fair amount of information, but all I really want you to try to glean from that is whereas to hit our business model, we once had to have 40 inmates, now because of the work that was done up at the sheriff's office applying for the grant from the federal government. We only have to have 24 inmates right now in order to meet our business model. And that's great news. Right now we are fat on the hog, so to speak. Our numbers are high. We don't know what's always going to be that way. And I can tell you that to try to house 24 inmates on a federal dollar is a lot easier than trying to house four. So things are looking good. Our current ADP, as of the data, three days ago was still at 60. So we're outperforming even where we projected our outperformance to be at one point and just keeps getting better. So you see as the numbers that I provided at our regular commission meetings that right now our federal revenue is approximately 1.3, almost 1.4 million. Here we get into the consequences of our success. which you've heard me talk about all along. If we're going to put a lot more inmates in there, we're going to make a lot more money. We're going to use more toothpaste. We're going to use more toilet paper. We're going to have to spend more money on food. And so, in what is page 20, you start to see what we need back. On page 21, you can see that there's You will see a reflection of the decision that I asked the board to make and it was granted back in June and that was the increase for the phlebotomists. So that's the impact. 22 introduces you to the bottom line of the major points of our consequences. And so we'll spend a little bit of time talking about this. There are grants out there, gentlemen, enables us to put in the defibrillator in every patrol car, we can't find a grant that allows us to do that in a jail. And a jail environment is such that I feel we need to have them. From my perspective, I give you the strongest recommendation that I can. I don't think it's an option. I think we intend to get rid of those folks up there. This is an extremely important medical device that we need. In fact, we need two of them. We teach up at the class as part of our federal contract. We run it about 18 different classes right now in the classroom as you've all toured. And this ranges from STD prevention to how to balance your checkbook and how to stay out of trouble and how to re-ingratiate yourself in the society. The building, in order to, I suspect it was part of value-added engineering where we lost our sound panels for the classroom. I don't remember that exactly, but if we had it in there at all, that's where it would have gotten cut out, and I'd like to put them in there. When people are trying to teach classes, the echo in there is impressive, and it's hard for people to hear. We need something to help us out with that. That's the sound barrier. Reassurance solutions. This one's kind of an interesting opportunity for us. So as you may recall, we have three infirmary cells in the new facility. From those three cells, as of June, we have generated $87,000 in revenue. The reason is because they're unique cells. They're specifically designed for those that have medical needs and other facilities don't have that accommodation. So we've had an opportunity to capture that corner of the market, if you will, and we've made a fair amount of money doing it. But it's also, and also for our staff, if you put somebody that has got some level of medical distress, it means we've got to check on them more. And that means that that is time that they're not focusing on other details that I would like them to focus on. So what we're asking for here are these sensors. Believe it or not, they can put a sensor in those cells and give us an alarm if they are in medical distress. It knows whether or not their heart is beating. It knows whether or not we need to call the medical staff down the road. I see this as an insurance policy. I'm going over it substantially well. I'm satisfied that this is a legitimate reinvestment of some of the money that we're making out there. And those are federal prisoners that you're making the money off of? Yep. Just federal? Yep. We can put anybody in there, Commissioner, but this is, yeah. Can you put Eric in there? SCBAs. This is a self-contained breathing apparatus. This is the thing you don if there's a fire and you got to breathe through the smoke. We have been functioning with hand-me-downs for many, many years. And when we're dealing with a number of inmates that we're now dealing with, we need reliable, safety equipment, and we want equipment that marries up appropriately with the firefighters who would respond to our need. And this is what we've come up. We sat down with our fire departments and had them give us suggestions. We talked to Paul Thompson about it. He's got years of firefighting experience. This is the dollar amount that we came up to.

So that would be one that they're comfortable to recharge the tanks and all that?

Exactly right. Yep. If my paper runs dry, I can grab yours and you can keep running on function. Very important part of our safety code. One thing that I would ask you to consider is you click on page 24. You see there that we've made a fair amount of money. It's a reinvestment of about 13% of our overage to put back into our needs. But The money, the $47,706 that's represented in Section 3, that's not an annual amount. That's just a one-time deal. And Section 1 and Section 2 at some point will just be part of the way we normally function. It becomes much more predictable as we know what numbers look like. So on page 25, now that's a reflection of where the Section 3 budget usually lands. we had a lot of success right at that 16-9 mark. And I would say it might be a little north of that going into 2028, but not much. So that 68,000 is going to go right back down. Just starting to look. 214. 214 is somewhat of a self-sustaining budget. It used to be a wholly self-sustaining budget. If you followed the Some of the decisions that have come down last year, the effect of it, I'll try to explain as simply and quickly as possible. That program is going to run out of money in about 20 months. So we used to get a grant from the Attorney General's office, and the grant was such that it paid for the differences between what it cost us to run and what we brought in in revenue. So the state keeps the vast majority of the revenue. I don't know what they do with it. That's not what I do for a living, but they raised it from a dollar, where it has been, a dollar plus the grant money that they would give you, to $1.45, and they kept the grant money. So we're going to go broke. That's all there is to it. We can get through this year. Sheriff's offices across the state are crunching numbers, trying to figure out what they're going to do. As a consequence, in part, Meade County Sheriff has already served notice that he's shutting down the 24-7 program in Meade County on January 1st. If you're not familiar with the statute, the 24-7 program is a sheriff's program, and the sheriff has the opportunity to opt out of it. We would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,300 a month short if we tried to continue with it. I got a difficult decision to make. I believe in the program. We've had success with the program. It has great value to people that are struggling in life. And in terms of the success of the program, there was in the early time, we had about 90% of our problems from 3% of the clients. Those are pretty good numbers. Right now, we've got about 90% of our problem of 25% of the clients. I would feel bad if we had to shut it down, but I don't think it's a burden that the taxpayers of Lawrence County should have to harbor.

So we're going to figure something out.

I have nothing to add for 219. If you're not familiar with that number, that is a drug asset for your program. I don't anticipate spending any money in there. Now we're at 225. Last year, I approached the board, actually, I think it was three years ago now, said the calls for service in our own PCET are such that we've got to get to a number of 11 so that we can have two dispatchers on at any given time around the clock. And so the plan was to, over a period of about four years, we would have one dispatcher and kind of ease into them. Last year, I made that request. Well, you granted the request, for one dispatcher two years ago. Last year I requested it and I pulled it to try to help everybody out. And now I have to ask for two. Two is a hinge pin for the consolidation effort. I can't do it. We can't consolidate with spearfishing if we don't get these two spots. I hate to put you on a spot like that, but that's as plain a language as I can offer. We have to have 14 dispatchers in order to make this consolidation work, in order to have the people that we would need to cover all of the workload. And it starts with this. We'll come talk about that a little bit more.

So was this an additional to the four that you bring up? Yes.

So we have eight now, Commissioner.

We've got to get to 14.

So just talking purely by the budget, the $38,000 that you see represented on page 31, that is to update our computers. Now what's important about these two numbers here with the Annie Alley, well, in particular the $38,000, if we consolidate it or not, we'd have to pay that amount. So it's got nothing to do with the consolidation whatsoever. That's just part of the routine of updating equipment. So that's where the increases come from. What's of particular note is that you don't see a lot in there about the consolidation. You flip over to page 32, now you're seeing section two, and really the lion's share of what's represented there is the $38,000 to upgrade our own computer systems. This is something that Greg monitors for us, and he tells us we've got to upgrade it, throw in the budget, and we upgrade it. That's what keeps us rolling. Section three, we've got another upgrade of 29,200, regardless of the consolidation, that number would be there. So it's important to make note of that because when we start looking at what I would ask the Board to consider, which is now first represented in this PowerPoint printout on page 34. I was approached by the Chief and the Mayor, in their hope to try to consolidate. Consolidation has got a lot of complexity to it. I just happen to think that we're good at it. We've already had to move our PSAP twice. We moved it down to Pennington County and then we moved it to the new facility during the build. We know how to do it. I feel like I've got a good handle on how to manage it, how the money goes. And so we put pen to paper and we started working out I'll do my best to speak off the cuff. It can get kind of boggled down if I don't choose my words exactly right. So if you have questions, be sure to stop me along the way. Here's kind of how it plays out. As I said, we need four from them specifically. We need six total. I happen to have five, but I'm addressing specifically the four. They pay more than we do. We all know that. They have an interest, as do I, of taking care of their people. It's an interest on their part because it's the right thing to do. Those folks are literally losing their job. It's an interest on my part because I don't want a bunch of disgruntled people coming up here, and I want them to know that they're coming into an environment where they're cared for, just like our existing dispatchers. and that they've been made whole financially to the extent that we can. So the first two that you see represented there, Spearfish 1 and Spearfish 2 is exactly that. So in order to accommodate this move, I would ask the board to consider allowing me to add three categories of positions. And this is all part and parcel to try to make these folks whole and to recognize their tenure and their experience with the city of Spearfish. So the first person would be who is their dispatch supervisor. And he makes a fair amount of money. I can only meet him to a certain point. So I would ask that this board allow me to add a 911 coordinator assistant. We'll get to the actual numbers here in a little bit. This will make him, I think off the top of my head within about $3 and 50 cents of being whole. So he's still taking quite a pay cut to come up there. I've recommended to Spearfish that they give him some kind of a severance package to make up the difference. He has filed with us a letter of intent to make the move. And again, I can't emphasize enough. I can't hire six dispatchers between now and January and get them up to a level where they can function. So it is vital that we take care of these people and try to get them to come up. The second one, is a very tenured telecommunicator that they have down in Spearfish. If memory serves me, I think she's got about 15 years worth of service. So the second position that I would ask you to consider allowing me is a position called a senior telecommunicator. That makes her whole. If we give no supervisory responsibility, but it allows her to make this transition just as needed. There's also no, I stand corrected. So what we would take Don to, thank you Jamie, is a dispatcher three grade three. That's typically the equivalent of a patrol sergeant that would be a supervisor for the dispatch center. The balance of them, number three and four, are their senior dispatch positions. So we're going to slide them in between dispatcher two grade three and dispatcher three. There's not another scale that goes along with it, it's just a one-grade stop, so to speak. Another thing that I would add is in regards to Spearfish 1 and Spearfish 2, those positions are only good for the length of the time that those particular individuals continue their employment with the county. Those two decide to quit, go somewhere else, otherwise retire. we no longer have a pay deficit to accommodate for, and we can make the shift at that time that we need to. So when you look at this cost assessment sheet, it represents a pay disparity compensation of $14,490. That amount of money is what I'm passing on to Spearfish that they have to pay the county to make up for the difference in the pay. Anybody got any questions about that?

I've got a procedural one. Do we need to change the personnel manual and or the classifications before we can actually approve?

Yes.

Before the first year, correct?

Yes, yeah, because he's the E91 coordinator slash assistant. So, yes, we will need to change the name, but not the grade.

But we'll never have to do that until, well, we have to do it sometime before the first, right? But not before we adopt the budget.

Right. Yeah, you could make the motion.

Can I talk to you about that as we move on? Sure. I just wanted to get through that. Yes, we will. It's the perfect question for the exact problem that I'm trying to get. Now we're moving down to the second part. You see that the subtotal from Section 1 is $409,965. Now we're moving into non-personnel operating expenses. And so you see that all I'm doing there is coming up with two tens, section two and three, and two, two, five, section two and three. Fair enough. I mean, it's the budget that I just presented to you. I'm taking that number and then here's the equation. You get the sum total for your work product and we'll call that calls for service. And you figure out which percentage of call for service is specifically related to them. We call that the Spearfish Specific Call Volume. As you obtain that number, you multiply it out to find out the percentage. To bring Spearfish on board with Lawrence County's existing PSAP is an increase of 32% of our workload. So for the salary portion, the reason we came up with four, they have to pay for four, is because it works out to 4.48%. of people that they need to supply. I waived the 0.48%. It's awful hard to hire half an employee. Now we're moving down that same 32%. It's calculated into the non-personnel operating expenses. You see that there are some discounts that I put in there. We talked about those in the budget. Those are things that we would have to do whether we consolidated with them or not. It's not honest. to try to pass that cost off to them. So that's some of the discounts. The other discount you see represented is 7%. I take it down from 32 to 25. Why? It's my business sense that we have to give them something. We have to give them something because we're going to expect them to pay at the same time that lead deadwood and whitewood do not which is something that we'll have to address at a point not too far down the road. So the next application of a, if you will, a benefit to them is we have paid them 50% of our 911 surcharge for the 33 years that I've been up here. It isn't fair, given the need to have a close relationship with our counterpart, to take that money from them and then hit them with another 200,000 for employees. So what I have presented is that every year we would calculate 50% of the preceding year's 911 surcharge and give that to Spirit or count that in Spiritfish as a discount. Everybody benefits. We keep the surcharge that helps us pay for the cost of the employees. They get the benefit from money that historically they have been given. By timing all pencils out, this year it would work out that we would build in $217,820. The cost. We haven't even begun to talk about the cost to consolidate the PSAPs. We need a new server. We have discussed that. That total with the cost in the maintenance is $85,000. The cost in the city of Spearfish would be roughly $327,000 or so to come on board. And really all that money is to transfer their data into our system, onto our server. We can't operate APSAP with two different systems. They've got to be the same system. Everybody's got to talk. We went to the 911 Board on behalf of the City of Spiritfish. When I say we, I want to be careful to point out that that means specifically Jamie. Jamie wrote the grant, Jamie testified before the Board and was awarded full cost. We're still trying to identify what that cost is, which gives me a really ugly feeling at the time that we are trying to present a budget. Spearfish is doing everything that they can to reduce the data that they want to transfer. So what started off, roughly speaking, I'm just going to grab a number, roughly speaking about $315,000 has gone down to roughly speaking about $278,000 as of 6 o'clock last night. We have asked the 911 coordinator for the state to consider picking up the cost for the server, which is another 60,000, plus the first year cost for the maintenance of that server, which is 15,119. So they approved 327 with the understanding that it might go up and it might go down. Spiritfish has worked hard to make it go down substantially, which gives us more gap room to try to get them to pay for the server and the maintenance cost of the server. Their verbal affirmation has been, they feel very strongly that they'll be able to pick up the cost. So if you remember back in 211, I talked about $15,119 moving forward, that would be our cost. That is the additional cost for the maintenance fee on the server that we have to have to have the consolidation. Please ask me a question because I feel like... Jamie still understands it.

As long as Jamie understands, we're all right.

That's what I say. Some of the bad news.

It's not really that bad. It's not really that bad. Take a deep breath. It's not.

I notice it's not printed on this giant thing, the bad news. It stops right about where you stopped right now. Right at the good news.

It's because this was all printed before the bad news came, right?

Going into a process like this, in my career, we've gone through two different migrations into computer software records management systems. It takes time. It's a workload that can be extreme. I had not envisioned that Zerker would be able to work with us and pull this off in 2026. We were already trying to come up with plans to run two different systems into 2027 until we could be up and running. And in my mind's eye, that was the summer of 2027. Last night at about 5.30, we found out that Zerker has every intent to get us up and running and ready to go by January 1 of 2027. Sure, this board Can the surface city council ultimately agree that that's the direction you want to go? The reason it's bad is because of me personally, I tend to be a little anal with my budgets. I don't like having to say this, but the numbers that are before you are not the numbers that we need to really consider. So you recall the 225 was Brenda made some adjustments. She added that 327,000 and she gave it back to you. That $327,000 was the cost of consolidation that the state was going to reimburse us for. Now we've got to pull that $327,000 back out of the budget for 2027 because we're going to try to do it in 2026. So at some point in the very near future when we can nail down the exact number, I'll be coming back to the board and asking for spending authority spend that money in 2026 to be reimbursed. We're getting a grant. So will we get it this year, or will we get it next year? That's what we confirmed.

Just this year instead of in 2027.

So that actually, it seems like there's good news in there. So that makes your budget even better. It just makes me look bad. We're not worried about that.

Brian, that's an easy fix. Don't beat yourself up.

So that's where we're at. Whenever you decide the issue on how you want me to handle the $15,119 in the budget year of 2027, I'll take a run at it. I'm happy to do it. If you have the money, I sure appreciate not having to try to The way I got to do it is, let's be honest, something that we anticipated buying. We won't be able to buy it. We just won't buy it until we figure out how to get to that number. There are some specifics that I want to hit. Where's the first page? No, there's the whole other action plan. So I want to cover some details with this. Ruth worked hard and then a flash came up with two different MOUs that ultimately this board of commissioners would have to vote on as would the city council. One MOU deals specifically with their use of what will be our software. It's nearly the exact same agreement that we have with Lee, Deadwood, and White. Bruce and I consider that to be kind of a no-brainer. The second MOU deals specifically with that billing assessment and how that actually lays out. And it covers some other things that are party to the agreement. So if you can indulge me just a little bit longer, I'd like to read some stuff to you that really lays out what we would expect from them and what we would offer them through this process. The city of Spearfish agrees to reimburse Lawrence County for the total compensation for four full-time telecommunicators, keeping in mind that they get the discount from 50% of the preceding year's 911 search age. Should our staffing prove to fall short of our standard, the city of Spearfish would be assessed an additional telecommunicator. In other words, if we experience some kind of crazy growth, they have to be accountable for their Spearfish specific call volume. If it goes up above 5,800, the number that Jamie and I have identified, we're going to assess them another telecommunicator cost. City of Spearfish agrees to increase to five telecommunicators should the Spearfish specific call volume increase to over 5,800 per year. City of Spearfish agrees that a pay disparity exists between county pay scales and the City of Spearfish pay scales. And it has been calculated that a partial disparity in the amount of $14,490 exists. The City of Spearfish agrees to pay the estimated disparity so long as these two employees retain their county employment. The disparity includes a shortage specific to a particular employee who's i was wrong i said 350 it's 375 an hour for 7 800 a year in pay cut that he's going to realize and so on his behalf i've asked the city of spirit fish to give him a severance package in that phone so at least for year one you know he has time to recalculate his bills and we all have car payments and so on so um to date i'm happy to announce that all five Spearfish telecommunicators have presented me with a letter of intent to apply for a position. I think we're going in a good place there. I'm not quite ready. I won't talk about that just yet. The county would agree to honor the tenure of any Spearfish City employee who transitions to Lawrence County employment. Now, here's what I mean by that. these people have served their community in one particular case for 15 years and they shouldn't have to start over because of consolidation i'm doing the same job to get longevity they get they get longevity and i hope you feel the same i think that's to get to get it done i mean this is something we've been talking about for years right trying to get back when i first got more two dollars and three The city would also agree to reimburse the county for a total operating and equipment cost calculated by the Spearfish specific call volume divided by the total center call volume. City of Spearfish agrees to transfer ownership of the existing compatible dispatch equipment. So anything that they get down there, we need one of their councils. If we take one of their councils and bring it up here, it saves the process $140,000. City of Spearfish agrees to retain the full cost to maintain their own radio frequencies. They don't need to be paying for their towers, deadwood bays for theirs, lead bays for theirs. That needs to be the same. City of Spearfish agrees to be responsible for their portion of the annual central square maintenance fees and any additional applications that their PD, such as field ops would employ. It's the same deal that we've got with everybody else. City of Spearfish agrees to honor telecommunicator's rec center benefits. I'll get right down into the weeds. I met with each of these city employees and I said, what's your concern? What would bother you about doing this? There was one in particular that I won't share because this is a public format, but I will tell you this, it's a pretty heart tugging reality in her life. And I think the city should consider offering those employees the benefit of the free rec center for the balance of their employment in the county. The county agrees to discount the percentages assessed by 7%, I discussed that. The county agrees to defer the city's costs by an amount equal to 50% of the previous year's 911 surcharge allocation. The county agrees to handle the city's surface administrative calls during non-business hours to include weekends. The county agrees to apply for associated grant, which we did, and we're awarded. Then we've got, I'm not going to read this part of it. At a point where we would be prepared to offer the MOUs, we'll explain exactly how those calculations pencil out on paper. I've explained it verbally.

I hope you kind of agree with it.

Here is where we're at. As I said, this is a complicated process and it's something that we need to take advantage of and I believe we need to take advantage of it now. To put that into terms, I've seen their budget. I have not retained what their budget is. So I'll use our terms because it has to cost them approximately what it costs us to maintain a PSAP. If we were to assume that they have to pay with employees and operating costs, roughly speaking, a million dollars a year to maintain their paycheck, this agreement would save them nearly $800,000 a year. It's a staggering amount of money that they can save. It will not save the county much, if anything. I'm not talking pennies. I'm not talking thousands. But those are still county residents that live in the city of Spearfish. This is the right thing to do. And we need to proceed on that basis. One deal consider that in addition to the annual savings, through Jamie's effort, we were also able to secure a grant from 911. You could potentially look at a million one, a million two that's on the table to go through with this. I don't see I don't see how we don't do it. Even if there is marginal expense to the county, which at one point we calculated, roughly speaking, 12,000. About 12,000 costs to the county. That doesn't count the 15,119 we just got hit with two weeks ago. But that's where we were at. It's the right thing to do. But I have some asks. because it's a complicated process to get two governmental entities to be able to sign things in such a timely manner so that we can move forward. Because of the fact that we're still trying to save money, I can't present you with the actual contract. There's some verbiage that their city attorney wants to get together with Bruce on and mull over a little bit. Here's my asks. I don't have a solution nor do I have a, motion prepared or an idea on how we handle this, I'm looking to Bruce and Brenda to try to help me out. I can ask specifically for the wage of the E911 coordinator assistant. I can ask for Dawn, I'm sorry, the tenured telecommunicator in Spearfish to have her wage approved. and I can ask for the balance of the telecommunicators to have it approved. Why is that so important? I think most at this table would recognize that to be told that you're going to be out of a job in six months is kind of hard to do. And I think we need to bring peace to their life, let them know that we intend to take care of them, assuming they pass all of the testing that they still have to go through. And as I said before, they can figure out that in January they can still make their mortgage payment and they just think we need to bring peace to their life. A vote or a motion to that regard by this board would bring that peace and it would bring affirmation to the Spirit of the City Council that we've taken the first step and that we're committed to doing these things. Some kind of a vote or an affirmation to honor their tenure, I believe, is vitally important right now. Let's give them the respect for the years of service that they've put out there. There's some functional ability that I need in preparing this bill every year where I have to be able to offer some of my discretion, my professional discretion when I'm coming up with the bills. We call that discount discretion is what I'd like to represent. You saw it in the billing. There's a $38,000 bill that we would have to pay regardless of whether or not we consolidate it. Please give me that discretion to present that bill to the city on behalf of the county. Not just this year, but moving forward. Probably the biggest commitment, and I know it's not marrying up well for other reasons. We'd do an awful lot to this project if we had a commitment from the board to hire the two telecommunicators that we need to hire in order to make this go forward. Whatever you can offer me, that's the first step. Nothing works if you don't get those two people. Some kind of a commitment to hire those folks. Is it 2028, Sheriff?

Hire the two, or is that right now?

Oh, we don't need to hire them right now. Okay. I'll frame it this way, and I think the board needs to hear this. You need eight telecommunicators at minimum to run your ESAP. Spiritfish has five. Spiritfish has a telecommunicator that hasn't had a day off in over 60 days. They're hurting. They're working 12 hour shifts. They've got months to go before we would, before we hit January 1st and consolidate. We are already working on a plan to try to, they'd still be spearfish employees, but if we can bring them up the hill and get them working in our environments, maybe we can get them a day off by using our staff. That's some of the exigency that's going on. We don't need those people being wore out and burnt out by the time they get up here. The need is real. And anything that you can offer me as the sheriff at this time to help this project go through, I'd be indebted to you. On their behalf.

So I don't think you can give a 100% guarantee because state law requires that you hold a public hearing. And so you have to get public input. But A goal today might be that you approve the provisional budget, and then either today or your next day, probably today, right? And then the provisional budget gets published in the newspaper. So that's never really changed very much. Does that make sense? But I think that might be the, that's what I, my first salvo, that's what I have in mind. That's what I can think of, would be to include all of that as part of the provisional budget, with no opposition from anybody.

Could we interpret that, the passing of a provisional budget as this board's commitment to moving forward?

I think with all the details you laid out that goes into that provisional budget.

I don't know that it's ever changed. Again, you can't guarantee it because you have to have a public hearing. But I would say that that is a very strong commitment. If someone were to ask me, I would say that, especially if five of the commissioners agree to that, I would say it's a very strong commitment.

Thank you.

Chair, do they need to authorize the chairman to sign the agreements? I guess we can't, Ken, because we have some.

There's a couple that is a verb and perhaps an adjective.

It can't be too hard, can it?

No.

Frankly stated, one of the things that they identified already that they just want maybe another sentence helps. I'll just give it to you the way it was offered to me. In one of the agreements, they do talk about the sheriff's discretion. And that was concerning to them. And I personally, I took it as a compliment that they said, you know, right now we're happy with that because we trust you, but we don't know who's going to be the sheriff in the future. And maybe we need some language that tightens that up a little bit. So fair enough.

It is a nice struggle with that a little bit too. And I remembered that the sheriff is an elected position. A lot of authority because of that.

So if, and when this goes through, they will no longer have any type of dispatch facility down there at all. That's correct. Everything will be.

You don't talk about stars aligning. I mean, this is an example of it. Even if we had passionately desired to try to consolidate PSAPs any time prior, we didn't have the facility, neither there nor here. So there's a lot of things that came together.

Then they'll make an arrest, they'll just come up the hill and take care of business up here?

I can't speak to what their new protocol is going to be. After hours, you know, there's going to be some, either a phone that, if somebody comes in foot traffic to the police department, they pick up the phone and they call our telecommunicators up here, which I mean, let's be honest, it's likely to even be the same person if everything works out like they would want it to be and address their needs. The city patrolman needs to meet somebody somewhere they do.

So just to be clear, so then we'll have to work on the language, at least for the one agreement. So those won't get approved until August 11th and that's not a problem. So the alternative would be, yeah, August 11th, yeah. The alternative would be, it doesn't sound like the language is too serious, to give authorization today for the chairman to sign subject to you and I reviewing them. I don't know, of course, if that's going to pass. Is that necessary to do that? Is that an integral piece of this move? And we're off to August 11th.