Liquor license transfer, parks policy updates highlight recent City Council meeting

With all members present, the Lennox City Council met Monday, Jan. 12 at Lennox City Hall. Mayor Danny Fergen and Council members heard agenda items including

The City of Lennox has received an application to transfer a liquor license from Lawrence Enterprises, DBA The Only One, to Fencing Around, Inc. 

“State law requires a public hearing for the application of any new liquor license. This application is to transfer all licenses for The Only One Bar & Grill from Jill Lawrence to Fencing Around, Inc, owned by Jack Rentschle,” City Administrator, Nate Vander Plaats said. 

With no opponents or proponents to the issue, Mayor Fergen called for council discussion. 

“This property has been up for sale for quite a while now, I feel like moving forward on this will be beneficial to Lennox,” said Alderman Laura Thiesse. 

Motion to approve the transfer by Lauren VanDriel, seconded by Billy Welch, motion carried.

The Parks & Recreation policies have undergone comprehensive reorganization to improve clarity, usability, and overall structure. 

Parks & Recreation Director, Kristi Kranz gave an overview of the changes to the council. 

“I just want to give a quick highlight of the main items that I have changed within our park policy. One of the major changes we made was there was a lot of recreational program information within the park & rec policy that felt more like a program manual for operations to be used for myself in carrying out the goals of the program and knowing timelines and which leagues we are apart of. A lot of that was removed and it created a new program operation manual for myself. The park board did review that and gave their blessing on that,” she said. 

Campground policy, inclement weather policies, and swimming pool standards are some of the changes Kranz made to the policies. 

Motion to approve the new Parks & Rec policies made by Welch, seconded by VanDriel, motion carried.

The City of Lennox is growing into current or proposed flood zones, and further development can be eased by establishing base evaluations. Mitch Mergen was present to provide information to the council. 

“You’re part of the National Insurance Program and with that you are in charge of permitting projects that are adjacent to the floodplain and in Lennox there are two floodplains that the city is adjacent to, one being the Long Creek tributary and the other is the Lennox tributary to Long Creek,” he said. 

As the city continues to develop, growth is occurring in areas that are established flood zones, making development and regulations more complicated.

 “We have preliminary maps for them that we have been working on for probably the last ten years, which haven’t been effective yet, but are scheduled to become effective in the next couple of years,” Mergen said. 

Mergen reported his scope of work will be to establish the data that FEMA needs to be able to incorporate the floodplains into their maps and while the work may not take long on his end, it is at least a year-long process on FEMA’s end, and once complete, there is no yearly paperwork required to maintain the floodplain status. Mayor Fergen asked for public comment and Jim Gibbons stood to speak. 

“Has the study been completed or are you just authorizing for the study tonight? Is there any data that you’ve acquired already that can be made public?” he asked. “No, no data has been collected, the only data that’s available would through the FEMA flood maps,” Vander Plaats responded. 

With the total cost estimated at $42,000, Gibbons asked if it were plausible to use the FEMA data and save the money. 

“The FEMA data doesn’t give us all of the information we would need to approve a permit for a plan that someone wants to build. On the west side of town, there’s some proposals out there, and their engineers might tell Mitch they need to raise it x amount of feet, and this gives us the data to say yes this is appropriate or no it’s not appropriate,” said President Chad Swier. 

Motion to approve from Bill Daugherty, seconded by VanDriel, motion carried.

The City of Lennox has received a work order from the City Engineer for the long-anticipated Master Parks Plan. Landscape architect David Lock was present to discuss the plans. 

“The Parks & Rec master plan looks at all of the parks citywide. We would go through a public input process to hear from everyone and see what they like, don’t like, what improvements you think need to be made, and get a baseline for what you guys currently have. We would then conduct a statistically valid survey, a public survey that would get sent out to the Lennox School District area and ask more pointed questions in terms of activities people would like to see, what they think is important in parks, and use that data from the survey along with our initial findings of meeting with stakeholders and the public to work towards a comprehensive master plan with the recommendations,” he said. 

Lock stated the whole process typically takes from six to nine months to complete. Motion to approve by Swier, seconded by VanDriel, motion carried.

The City of Lennox and SD Department of Transportation have come to an agreement on lighting construction and maintenance along a stretch of SD Highway 44. 

“The SD Department of Transportation expects to reconstruct a one-mile stretch of SD Highway 44 this upcoming summer, widening it to three lanes between 280th Street on the south and 279th Street on the north. This project will also include lighting, and the SD DOT has involved the City of Lennox in discussions about this lighting. We have requested upgraded lighting to have the ability to post banners and Christmas lights similar to the existing lights on the west side of Highway 44 through town. This agreement includes that request, language on maintenance of the lights, a City responsibility, at the cost of $12,150,” said Vander Plaats. 

Motion to approve by VanDriel, seconded by Thiesse, motion carried.

With the 101st Legislative Session beginning in Pierre, and the community will need advocates for sound public policy. 

“I want to focus on three items for advocacy this year. The first is property tax reform, I think it’s obvious that something is going to happen here and I think it’s important that we play a role in that discussion. Not that we’re opposed to reductions in property tax for our residents, it just can’t come at the cost of vital services such as public safety. Second, tax increment financing, this is an important tool for communities of our size and some of the changes that have been proposed already are particularly troublesome to small communities. This is an essential tool to us and we need to be able to protect that. last but not least, local control. I think over the years we’ve seen legislation introduced and in some cases approved that takes decision authority out of the hands of our local elected bodies such as school boards, city councils, and counties and puts in into hands in Pierre that don’t know anything about our counties, cities, and townships. We’re going to making a big push to maintain the ability of towns to govern themselves,” Vander Plaats said. 

No action was required on the item.