Lincoln County Commission tackles zoning, highway projects and 2027 budget

The Lincoln County Board of Commission met Tuesday, Sept. 22.

A second reading and public hearing was held for an ordinance of Lincoln County, SD amending the code of ordinances of the county by changing the zone of the property described as the North half of the Northwest quarter (N1/2NW1/4) (Except the North 507.22 feet of the West 1030.50 feet, and except Lot B of Lot H-1 and except Lot H-1, and except Lots 1-15, 22-26, 29-34, 41-44, 51, 52, 55, 56, 62 and 63 of Springdale Estates) of Section 26, Township 100 North, Range 50 West of the 5th P.M., Lincoln County, South Dakota from the A-1 Agricultural District and the RR Rural Residential District to the RR Rural Residential District and amending the Official Zoning Map of Lincoln County. Planning Director, Toby Brown, was present to answer any questions from the commission. 

“The City of Harrisburg did review and approve a change in their comprehensive plan or an amendment to it to identify this property as future residential. So as we stand here, it is in conformance with the county plan and the City of Harrisburg Comprehensive Plan,” Brown said. 

Commissioner Jim Schmidt asked the applicant, Gary Hupp what price range of homes he is looking to put in the development. 

“Depending on Harrisburg’s requirements, we are going to be pushing acre lots which will push $300-$350,000 just for the lots, so you’re not going to get anything in there for less than $700,000,” he said. 

“You’re not looking to install access point onto 27?” asked Joel Arends. 

“There’s an existing gravel that punks out on the 106 and so we are going to put one on 106 at the request of the City of Harrisburg,” Hupp responded. 

With no proponents or opponents, Tiffani Landeen closed testimony with a motion to approve from Schmidt, seconded by Arends, motion carried unanimously.

Highway Superintendent Terry Fluit requested board action to approve and authorize the Chair to execute agreements with the South Dakota Department of Transportation for preliminary engineering for bridges. 

“In August, we were awarded four PE grants through the big program. I was anticipating two, but the state also had a special federal PE grant applications that were available for us. I applied for three on the federal side which covers 100% but on all of the ones I received were under the big grant. So these are in addition to the three that I have in the budget for the provisional budget for next year,” he said. 

Motion was made to approve by Arends, seconded by Herman Otten, motion carried unanimously. 

Fluit also requested board action to award the Lincoln County Highway Lake Alvin box culvert project to Soukup Construction Inc. in the amount of $2,292,292.

“We had a bid opening on the 9th of September with eight bidders on this project. My budget that I had in for this project was $3.2 million because when we put the budget together for 2026, we’re putting it together in April of last year without a lot of specific details including quantities for a lot of the projects so they were a little high,” Fluit said. Motion to approve by Arends, seconded by Otten, motion carried unanimously.

Commissioner Landeen requested the commission consider a motion to approve the installation of a Cellular Distribution Antenna System at the Justice Center. Julie Dotzenrod with Tegra was present to give more information to the commission. 

“Back in August, we had Pearson Wireless come to the project just to test what the wireless strength is within the building. You can’t do the test until the building is complete with glass, roofs, walls, and interior partition finishes, so that is why it happened later in the project and once we did that study, we found quite a few areas within the building that had a poor signal. With that, we went back to Pearson Wireless asking them to put a proposal together and they put two together. The first one is what their recommended package would be for our size building and then after some further discussion we talked about what happens if 5G and ultra-wideband comes what would that cost be,” Dotzenrod said. 

Chairwoman Landeen asked for public comment on the item and Linda Montgomery stood to speak.

 “I would like you to not approve this as it clearly states the actual date and cost of the scheduled extension cannot be finalized yet. We can’t just always say yes we want this and not worry about the cost and the date and the finalization of the project. It doesn’t need to be done now; it needs to be investigated. I do not think giving approval for something that we have no idea of what it’s going to cost or when it’s going to be done would be a fool’s game,” she said. 

Motion to table until January 5, 2027, was made by Arends, seconded by Putnam, motion carried unanimously.

Chief Deputy, Chad Brown with the Lincoln County Sheriff’s office asked the commission to consider a motion to o approve and authorize the Chair to execute the contract for housing of Lincoln County prisoners in Minnehaha County. 

“The first change in the contract will be the daily rate, currently, it’s at $131.90 and in 2027 it would be $1422.33 so it would be an increase of about $10.43,” he said. Brown reported that Minnehaha County requested they lower the guaranteed beds from 45 to 35 since the county has had fewer residents in custody resulting in a $500,000 savings. Motion to approve by Arends, seconded by Otten, motion carried unanimously.

Auditor, Sheri Lund requested board discussion with possible action to approve and adopt the 2027 Provisional Budget as the Annual Budget of appropriations and expenditures for Lincoln County, its institutions, and agencies for 2027. “

The biggest change is to the health insurance line item in the personnel budget, we’re going from a budget of 15% to 3%,” she said. 

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