Road transfer to Lennox, budget planning highlight recent Commission meeting

The Lincoln County Board of Commissioners met Tuesday, February 3 in the Lincoln County Boardroom. With all member present the commissioners heard agenda items including a notice of intent to raffle, road transfer, and the beginning of the budget process.

4-H Advisor, Wendy Sweeter presented a Notice of Intent to Raffle per SDCL 22-25-25 - Lincoln County Fairgrounds Foundation. 

“This is for the Raising the Roof fundraiser that has been done every year. This year it will be on March 7 and like last year there will be a gun raffle with a couple more guns. The tickets are $20. No ammo will be on site, and no guns can go home with the winner until they have had the paperwork and background checks done with the broker,” she said. With no objections, the commission thanked Sweeter for her time.

Highway Superintendent, Terry Fluit asked the commission to consider a motion to approve and authorize the Chair to execute an agreement with the city of Lennox to transfer a road segment. 

“Several months ago, I received a call and email from Nate Vander Plaats, City Administrator of Lennox. They are looking to expand on the West side of Lennox and in doing so, they are looking for access. Access won’t conform where they wanted it to or what our policy is, so we had to do some negotiating, and it didn’t take very much. I sent them over a draft agreement for taking the road and they did a few things in it and we came to an agreement really quickly,” Fluit said. 

465th Avenue or County Road 103 to State Highway 44 on the South and ending at the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad right-of-way. A mill, overlay, and surface treatment will need to be done by the County. Commissioner Joel Arends asked Vander Plaats what the city plans to do that requires a transfer from the county to the city. 

“If you look at the county’s access regulations, I think it’s 1,000 feet is where you can see accesses onto your highway. As a city becomes modernized, obviously you’re going to have intervals more like 300 feet for city blocks. And that’s what this would allow us to do. It’s probably something that we should have taken over a while ago because we’ve been annexed on the East side of this road for decades,” Vander Plaats responded. 

“It doesn’t make much difference if we have to take care of them,” Commissioner Doug Putnam said. 

Commissioner Jim Schmidt asked Vander Plaats if he had plans for home development in the area. 

“We recently approved one preliminary plan for multi-family housing on the West side of Cleveland. That’s our primary concern as that’s where we’re going to need access. We have land purchased on the East side as well by a developer to do another smaller multi family housing development,” Vander Plaats said. 

“Why if you’re taking over the road wouldn’t you move the snow,” Putnam asked again. 

“We can move the snow,” Vander Plaats responded. 

“To me it seems kind of off that we give you a road and then we have to move the snow for seven years,” Putnam said. 

Motion to approve by Schmidt, seconded by Arends, motion carried.

Fluit asked the commission to consider a motion to select a consultant for the 2026 bridge inspections. 

“We have to have bridge inspections done every year. This year I believe we are on township roads and there are about 87 structures this year to be inspected,” he said. Fluit requests IMEG Consultants Corp be selected to perform the inspections. Motion to approve by Arends, seconded by Schmidt, motion carried.

Auditor, Sheri Lund gave a presentation regarding the budget process and requested board action to approve the FY 2027 Budget Calendar and Planning Cycle. 

“The budget committee is made up of Paul Anderson, Jim Schmidt, Michelle Burkhart, myself, and Toby Brown. We went through the planning calendar and we are going to change things up a bit because we feel it’s a better way to do the budget,” Lund said showing a list of dates for department program service presentations. 

Motion to approve the calendar by Betty Otten, seconded by Arends, motion carried.

Chairwoman Tiffani Landeen asked Lund about petition circulation in the legislature. 

“Yesterday, during the House Committee, there was a 1095B that was presented. What 1095B does is aligns the schools, cities, and counties with the deadlines. Currently, the cities have a starting petition date of February 2, and the county has it of January 1. Now, with everybody having the election on the same day, this bill gets everything together. The problem is the deadline is going to move from March 31 for the petition deadline to we’re hoping March 17, which would be the third Tuesday in March so that cuts off the time for you to pass out petitions by about a week. But what it does do is it gives the auditors an opportunity to review the petitions, the secretary of state’s office an opportunity to verify their petitions, any legal action that would be because of lawsuits for ballot issues because we have to have the ballots in our possession for absentee voting to start by April 17,” she said.