Commission debates vacancy process, Justice Center purchases and old Courthouse

With all members present, the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners met Tuesday, July 14. Commissioners heard agenda items including discussion on commissioner vacancy, compensation study, the old courthouse building, and more. 

Commissioner Doug Putnam requested board discussion on the appointment for commissioner vacancy. Commissioner Putnam left the commissioners desk and stood to speak behind the podium. 

“I want to speak today, not just about the appointment of the new District 2 commissioner itself, but the process. What happened was a disservice to the applicants who believed that they would receive an honest, fair consideration for District 2 Commission seat. And to the residents of District 2 who believe their voices would be genuinely heard. Lincoln County taxpayers took the process seriously. They invested their own time preparing letters of intent, submitting applications, interviewing in a public meeting, and returning the following week because they believed the process mattered. The public took the process seriously as well. Between the meeting at Norway Center and the two commission meetings, representatives from Fairview, Eden, Norway, Pleasant, Brooklyn, Delaware, Highland, Lincoln, Grant, and Delapre Townships appeared to participate in these local officials and residents who know District 2 best and chose to make their voices heard. The public support was overwhelmingly one sided. Ten individuals publicly supported Duane Carlson. Maddie Vogel received three supporters, Sara Steever and Linda Montgomery each received two, Eric Eneboe received one, Herman Otten received no public endorsements during the process,” said Putnam. 

“Duane also had a support of two applicants who later withdrew, a state legislator who supported him, five township officials, one planning and zoning commissioner, and representatives from 10-14 townships in District 2. Whether you agree those recommendations or not, they are representing a significant amount of public participation. Those residents believed their comments, their attendance, and their support would be part of the commissioners deliberation. Instead, many of the people walked away believing the decision had entirely been made. If that was the case, the public deserved honesty, the applicants deserved honesty. Rather than asking people to spend hours preparing applications, interviewing publicly, attending meetings, speaking before the commission, they should have been told from the beginning that the outcome had already been decided. Government works best when the people believe that their participation matters, even when someone is not appointed. They should know they were heard, their qualifications were fairly considered, and the decision was made after genuine deliberation,” Putnam continued. 

Chairwoman Tiffani Landeen asked if the presenter from the first agenda item was ready to present. “Public Comment,” was shouted from the crowd. Chairwoman Landeen continued speaking to representatives from McGrath Human Resources Group. 

“Public is looking for public comment on the agenda,” Commissioner Joel Arends interrupted. 

“We’ll circle back to that, I have a professional that’s first item on our agenda so we’re going to take that up now,” Landeen responded. 

Dr. Victoria McGrath of McGrath Human Resources Group gave a presentation on the compensation and benefits study. 

“We were asked to come in and take a look at your current compensation system and make sure it’s updated to the market. How we proceeded this study was this. We did interviews with administration making sure what were the goals and objectives of the study. We met with department directors, we reviewed your current compensation system, your current job descriptions and policies related to compensation, selected a number of comparable organizations, and collected data from them on their minimum, midpoint, and maximum of what people were actually making, and reviewed that draft compensation system after we made some minor changes to position placement with the directors,” she said. 

McGrath recommends adding 3% to the entire schedule for the non-bargaining units to align with the market, eliminate the first three steps for paygrade 114-118 to put them more in line with the market, move positions, review sheriff’s recommended schedules, and make no changes to the Highway schedule. Chairwoman Landeen thanked Dr. McGrath for her presentation. 

Returning to Commissioner Putnam’s agenda item, Chairwoman Landeen asked for public comment on the item and Scott Montgomery was the first to speak. 

“I want to agree with what Doug’s presented here. I mean, when you have eight candidates on the ballot and we had our attorneys get up and tell up how long this thing would probably take and there would be multiple votes and how it was going to work, and it was all done in one vote. It kind of set me back a little bit. It’s like things were pre-planned here. The people were not listened to. There was an election where Duane Carlson lost by 34 votes, ten people got up here and supported him, and you guys just ignored us, which I think is wrong. This is supposed to be a representative government. You’re supposed to represent the people and you chose to ignore us,” he said. 

Two voices echoed Montgomery’s feelings and asked commissioner Herman Otten to decline the appointment. 

Building Superintendent John Rombough requested the commission consider a motion to approve the equipment purchase for the Justice Center. 

“I put together a list of the items I would like to purchase and it’s anything from my floor auto scrubbers for the floors to refrigerators for the breakroom to the mowing equipment and so forth,” he said. 

Commissioner Putnam and Arends questioned the price of the $659 undercounter beverage coolers. 

“You don’t have undercover beverage coolers in probably 90% of the courthouses of South Dakota. It seems like an extravagance and a lot of tax payers are saying to themselves I don’t have an undercounter beverage cooler at my house, and 90% of the courthouses don’t have one, so why does Lincoln County have one? It just seems extravagant and seems tone deaf for whoever put this together,” Arends said. 

“Do you have an alternative then if we don’t want the undercounter cooler that seems to be so objectionable,” asked Jim Schmidt. 

“I spend a lot of time in courthouses, it’s my job. I’m going to be in a courthouse this afternoon. There is no cooler and there is no refrigerator in the jury room of the courthouse I’m going to. Are the people of Yankton County different than people of Lincoln County. Do the jurors of Lincoln County somehow need cool water in order to make better decisions?” Arends responded.

“This is a one-time thing and how many times haven’t we heard when we bought something or build something new that we wish we would have done this and maybe this will be one of those issues, maybe it won’t, but if water becomes such a major issue, lets try to eliminate that problem and get on with something that’s important,” Schmidt said. 

“It’s not the water. Do you think we’re all stupid? You’re treating us like we’re ignorant. You just said it’s about the water, we’re not stupid, we’re not ignorant, it’s not about water. It’s about are you looking at the budget? Because if you can’t do the little things right, you can’t do the big things right,” Arends said. 

Chairwoman Landeen stopped the conversation asking Rombough why he is requesting a $50,000 lawnmower. 

“I’ve been doing grounds maintenance for 20 years. There’s a lot of different equipment out  there and quite honestly I had an $80,000 piece of equipment that was a snow machine that converted to a lawnmower during the summer and I have purchased those through the state through the normal bid process multiple times. They are the Cadillac of equipment, but they’re probably the most safest piece of equipment, the best operating piece of equipment, but they are expensive. So what I went with is a riding John Deere tractor that will have a cab that’s put on it and that will be the primary snow machine for that facility for sidewalks. Then in part of that package I would also get a zero turn lawn mower to mow the grass in a package with the two pieces of equipment,” he said. 

Chairwoman Landeen asked for public comment on the request and Linda Montgomery was the first to speak. 

“I think that we are looking at this wrong. $183,522.45 should not be coming out of John’s 2027 budget. This all should be bought with the $53 million that was planned for that Justice Center. Every time we’ve talked about an item for the Justice Center what do we hear? We’re under budget. All these things are needed before you open that Justice Center. This is not for 2027; this is for now. John’s budget shouldn’t get hit with this amount of money,” she said. 

Multiple residents stood and asked the commission to spend their tax dollars reasonably and pinch pennies where ever possible in the Justice Center as to not go over budget. 

“This is a Cadillac Courthouse on a Chevy budget,” Arends said making the motion to approve the FFE operational purchases less the top two line items of refrigerators and beverage coolers, seconded by Putnam, motion carried 4-1 with Landeen being the nay vote. 

Rombough requested board discussion and possible action for the future of the Old Courthouse Building. 

“I’m not sure where you want to go with this. This conversation has been discussed multiple times,” Rombough said. 

“Do you have either the demolition cost or cost of doing what was proposed after the study we did?” Chairwoman Landeen asked. 

“We came up with multiple options. A short term fix was a $400,000 to $500,000 for immediate roof upgrades. An engineer told me previously if we do anything we have to bring it to code and we had options to analyze each joint and determine whether the joint meets code and what the recommended fix for each joint would be and recommend adding additional rafters. Option two is to remodel with no full roof at $6.4 to $8.5 million or option 3 which is a full roof with an expected 20-year lifespan, that would be $9.6 million. Option four is demolition with façade fix for about $1.7 million,” he responded. 

“This is the conundrum that local government gets into is do you fix the used car or do you buy a new one? And that’s what makes this a tough decision. I would say though if you’re going to tear down a historic courthouse, you better have the buy in from the community. We had a couple meetings and I’ll tell you, there was no appetite from the community to want to tear it down,” Arends said. 

Commissioner Schmidt asked if there have been any studies done that would substantiate that the courthouse would be running out of space in the next three to five years. 

We built a new courthouse because we’re running out of space,” Arends responded. 

“We did do a space need study of the administration side and in my opinion we would be able to absorb it in the space that is emptied out by the state’s attorneys space, courtroom and so forth,” Rombough said. 

Commissioner Schmidt asked all of the commissioners how much money they would want to spend right now into saving the building. Arends made a motion to put out a request for proposals for architectural services, seconded by Putnam, motion carried unanimously.

Commissioner Schmidt requested board discussion and possible action to begin the process of adopting an Ordinance Imposing a Gross Receipts Tax and a Use Tax for Lincoln County. 

“Governor Rhoden and the State legislature proposed to give counties the option to enact a half cent sales tax solely for property tax relief and it is up the original bill and I will say, Commissioner Arends when we were first starting that, I remember you saying very clearly you don’t see how we would refer that to the people which I am very much in favor of. But in order for the people to be able to vote on whether they want to enact a sales tax, a commission has to approve the tax itself and then it can be preferred by the people to a public vote. So I’m looking at this as if we’re talking about property tax relief and we continually hear over and over again that we want to cut property taxes, this is an opportunity for a county to do that,” he said. 

“I think we should schedule this up for a vote and I think the way we should look at scheduling this for a vote is at a nighttime meeting, scheduled for 21 days out to give the public full ample opportunity to call us. So I suggest we set this for a vote at our August nighttime meeting,” Arends said. 

“You have to have it passed 90 days before you want it implemented and they implement in January and July, so you want it passed because there is a lot of behind the scenes work that the county has to do,” Auditor Sheri Lund said.