The Lennox City Council met Monday, July 22 in the Lennox boardroom. Council members heard agenda items including an increase to special maintenance fees, a compensation study, discussion of future water needs and more.
The City of Lennox annually establishes a Special Maintenance Fee which is collected on all residential and commercial properties in Lennox and the revenue from the fees is deposited into Fund 220 which is used exclusively for street maintenance projects.
“The City has annually established this maintenance fee in the past three years. Up to this point, that’s really only included slurry seal projects in the future it will also include mill and overlay projects and larder maintenance projects. For 2024, the Council increased the fee to $1.50 per linear foot of frontage and forecasted a 50 cent per foot increase for ’25 and ’26 to eventually get to the recommended amount of $2.50 per foot,” City Administrator, Nate Vander Plaats said.
Motion approved.
The City of Lennox annually updates its compensation study to ensure that wages are keeping pace with the local market.
“This year’s compensation study is slightly different from the previous versions. I mentioned before that I was growing a little concerned with the quality of data we’re getting from the South Dakota Municipal League salary survey for a variety of reasons, but it’s really become unreliable, and we needed to move away from that,” Vander Plaats said.
Vander Plaats is now relying on five nearby communities of similar size to pull data from including Beresford, Canton, Dell Rapids, Harrisburg and Tea.
“In terms of impact, I think it is important to note that several positions are outside of the 10% deviation that we generally are targeting. If possible, I would like to make market adjustments to several positions in the upcoming budget. Whether that is possible given the upcoming budget constraints is not clear at this time,” he said.
The Council agreed to approve the study but would like Vander Plaats to dig deeper into the surrounding counties to find out if the positions were comparable with the number of employees in each position and the coverage area of workers in each field.
The City of Lennox has been working with partners at Lewis & Clark Regional Water System (LCRWS) regarding long-term water needs for the community.
“I think tonight is a good time to have a further discussion on this. You’ll recall that we joined with I believe every other Lewis & Clark Community in participating in that expansion of 60 million gallons a day. That’s underway already and will provide Lennox with approximately 650,000 gallons of water per day, another 210,000 gallons over what we have now. Beyond that, the region has begun looking far into the future to ensure our long-term needs are met,” he said.
Vander Plaats would like to look into a second expansion with LCRWS or with Dakota Mainstem.
“Dakota Mainstem is in an exploratory phase now with seven LCRWS members joining, Tea and Harrisburg have applied in addition to Lincoln County RWS, Madison, Minnehaha CWC, Sioux Falls, and South Lincoln RWS,” he said.
Fees for joining Dakota Mainstem are not yet established, but VanderPlaats knows that members will be expected to contribute to the cost of the feasibility study. Membership fees will be under $4,000 per year. Motion to approve the membership application was approved.
The owner of the property at 609 South Main Street approached the City to ascertain their level of interest in purchasing the property.
“This is the house that is just East of the swimming pool, late last week, I received a message from the owner expressing an interest in selling the home and land, and asking if we would be interested. I advised that we would be interested and I would be speaking with the Council tonight about doing so. I have contacted a trusted realtor who knows the property about a quick market analysis for this property. That analysis puts the value somewhere in the range of $275,000 - $290,000. The house is of limited use to us, and we have discussed in the past moving the house off of the property if it were acquired,” Vander Plaats said.
The City would use finances out of the 2nd Penny Fund for the purchase of the lot. The Council agreed that this opportunity is one worth pursuing and requested Vander Plaats gather more information on the house.
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