Commissioners approve 2026 budget in split vote

With all members present, the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners met Tuesday, Sept. 2 in the Lincoln County Boardroom to discuss the 2026 Lincoln County budget. Auditor, Sheri Lund was present for the public hearing for the 2026 Lincoln County Budget. 

“Before we start the hearing, I do have some changes that I would like to discuss. During a department head meeting, we were discussing the issue with the vehicle and what was going on. We’re thinking what we’d like to do is as the sheriff surpluses his vehicles, move them down to 4-H and the auditor in name only, and then we are going to look for an inexpensive, if not free, online vehicle maintenance management program that we can manage the vehicle off of. So with that being said, these are the changes that I’d like to make to the budget that came up after the publication,” she said. 

Commissioner Betty Otten questioned the strategic planning expense as an added budget item stating it has not been discussed as a board. 

“Correct, but Commissioner Landeen wanted to put it in there. We have been having discussions about strategic planning; we just have not budgeted for it. So, we get the ball rolling, we want to have the money in there when we get going,” Lund responded. 

Motion to approve the changes to the budget by Jim Schmidt, seconded by Otten, motion carried 3-2 with Joel Arends and Doug Putnam being the nay votes. 

Chairwoman Tiffani Landeen asked if the commissioners had any more questions before approving the budget. 

“Under contracts and dues, I see that we are no longer going to belong to the Sioux Falls Development Foundation, Sioux Falls Chamber, or the Sioux Metro Development Commission. I wish to add those for the simple reason that Lincoln County appreciates the growth rate that we have due primarily to those three organizations marketing Sioux Falls and when they market Sioux Falls, they market Lincoln County because that is our largest city and that’s where our population is. So I look at the $250 for the development foundation, the $400 for the chamber dues, and the metro alliance we have $7,500. They do a lot of work, they market, and I think those are investments in our future and I would like to see those added to our budget,” Commissioner Schmidt said making the motion to add $8,150 to the dues and subscription line. 

Without a second, the motion died on the floor. Chairwoman Landeen asked for public input on the matter, hearing none, the motion failed again. Commissioner Joel Arends asked Building Superintendent, John Rombough the amount that was budgeted for air conditioning in the 4-H building. Rombough reported it would be $50,000. 

“I want to make a motion to amend air conditioning out of the budget, the $50,000. This weekend I was at the Dickinson County Fairgrounds and there was no air conditioning in their building. I went to the Turner County Fair, no air conditioning in some of their buildings. Commissioner Schmidt and myself sat through a couple work sessions with folks for the courthouse advisory committee and one of the things that we heard there is that there is a lot of HVAC problems with the old courthouse building and in my mind I would think that before we go purchasing new air conditioning, we should probably take care of what we have. I understand the reason for the request for the new air conditioning, wanting to do some events out there and things like that, but I don’t think those events would even pay for the air conditioning itself that we had out there,” Arends said, making the motion to remove air conditioning from the 4-H budget, motion died due to lack of a second. 

Chairwoman Landeen asked for opponents to the current budget to speak and Linda Montgomery took to the podium.

“If you would look at page 14 under the Veterans Service Officer and go down to other current expenses, travel and conference, they are the same amount as training. Now, I have never went to a conference that I’m going to pay for separate training for and what I found on numerous ones of this like equalization, we have the same thing on page 12 except they stay the same. They have traveling conference for $18,000 and training for $15,000 and total budget in ’26 is travel for $17,000 and training for $13,000 both of those. There is also GSI, I only went through a few of them on page 17 for travel conference it’s $2,000 for training it’s $2,000. For information and technology travel is $500 and training is $20,000 which I’m assuming that most that training would take place here and with the auditor’s budget travel and conference for the 2026 total budget is $3,000 and training is $5,000 and then was mentioned as $8,000. Now I’m not sure if you’re always putting those two numbers together but going through this I can find it on more pages that what I just put down. I would just like some clarification. Are those being double dipped into or is there a reason that they are coming up the conference and travel and the education is coming up with the same numbers,” she said. 

No other opponents or proponents for the budget stepped forward to speak. Commissioner Arends made the motion to take away economic assistance from the county from Children’s Inn, Helpline, Compass Center, Lifescapes, and Sanford Health, seconded by Putnam. Auditor Lund reported that the only organization they are statutorily required to provide funding to is Dakotabilities. 

“I certainly understand that we’re talking about dollars, but we’re also talking about what happens in society and if you don’t invest money in kids and dysfunction families, I don’t care about their budgets. But when I look at the Compass Center and I have been there. I don’t know if any of you have been, but when you talk about rape victims and their families and their kids, the collateral damage that’s done, or you go to the Children’s Inn where people have to go with battered families, they don’t have any place else to go. Kids are the resultant of that. So let’s not invest in that. Let’s save a few thousand dollars here so when they turn 18, they can now appear in our court system. So now we can go through the court, we can prosecute, we can defend, we can house, and when they get to that stage, recidivism starts going around and around and around and then we say, well, what’s going on? Well we didn’t take the time to invest when a kid had a chance to change,” Commissioner Schmidt said. 

Motion failed 2-3 with Otten, Schmidt, and Landeen being the nay votes. A motion to approve the budget made by Schmidt, seconded by Otten, motion carried 3-2 with Arends and Putnam being the nay votes. 

Chairwoman Landeen opened the floor for public comment. Linda Montgomery stood to speak. 

“Last Friday, I had an opportunity to go to the board of elections regarding the issue that we talked about last week regarding the uncertified laptops. They had decided in executive session, without more discussion from the public, that they could not make a decision because they didn’t have authority, they felt, over these uncertified laptops. So once again, when we got back, started talking to people and apparently there is a lawyer going around and selling herself to you guys that she may deal with this, to take the four counties and deal with this uncertified laptop. So again, I feel that the wagons and the horses are surrounding ESNS in comfort so that they don’t have to be accountable and they don’t have to talk to the public and it will be more and more difficult for us to continue to tell and get out the truth. ESNS has demonstrated a pattern of behavior. They sent or loaded software under uncertified machines in four of the biggest counites in South Dakota and that’s 47 percent of the vote. They also refused to submit engineering change orders for nonconforming laptops provided to the counties. They provided laptops for hardened EMS workstations with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth cards. They cut off on-site election day support for one of our biggest counties and they are a private for profit multi-million dollar company. Why is this our vendor? Why are we protecting them from them, from you all having us stand up and have a public hearing which I hope would be a give and take, of ESNS and the citizens and the auditors and you all of why are we protecting this company who has lied to us, we only have to go back four years. The CVR’s telling us there weren’t any, then telling us they were proprietary, then telling us “Oh, yeah, we got them, you can have them.” And then we find out right before the elections last time, the Secretary of State sats CVR’s are public record and then she calls the auditors and sends a message turn off the CVR’s. You cannot give those to the people. Something’s wrong. It has to be corrected and it’s the most important thing to this country to have free, fair, and transparent elections. I beg you to stand and be proud and listen to the people where we can actually have a give and take,” she said.