Lincoln County Commission approves budget transfers, DOT agreements, and Vietnam War Commemoration Day

The Lincoln County Commission met Tuesday, March 26 in the Lincoln County Boardroom. Commissioners heard agenda items including budgeted cash transfers, agreements with the DOT, ad hoc committees, and more.

Auditor, Sherri Lund joined the meeting to request board action to approve budgeted cash transfer and account clean up. 

“Every year during the budget process, we do budgeted cash for 911, emergency management, airport, and other funds, and this is the budgeted cash transfer for 911, emergency management, and the airport in the respectful amounts. Then I have some accounting cleanup that I want to do. We moved all of the ARPA funds into the general fund, so we don’t need that budgeted item anymore and that’s basically getting rid of the $497,100 out of the budget authority and we were previously accounting for county-wide postage in a separate fund and when we do the annual report I have to move it into my fund anyway, so I’m just moving those funds into my supplies and material budget to account for them,” she said. 

Motion approved.

Highway Superintendent, Terry Fluit joined the meeting for board action to approve and authorize the chair to execute an agreement with the South Dakota Department of Transportation regarding the annual funds for pavement markings. 

“About a year and a half ago, the South Dakota DOT came to the Highway Superintendents across the state and they were asking if we would take on the striping projects because typically the DOT would facilitate a contract a statewide striping program for the counties. This is an agreement for 15 years stating that the state is going to pay us out our portion of the money that was used for the striping program and I think Lincoln County is a little over $18,000 a year,” he said. 

Motion approved.

Fluit next requested board action to purchase metal culverts and bridge materials off the Beadle County bid for up to $120,000. 

“Beadle County has a bid for culverts and bridge materials in that bid and off that bid, we are looking to purchase metal culverts this year,” he said. 

This bid request is a 2024 budgeted item for up to $120,000. Motion approved. 

Fluit requested board action to approve and authorize the chair to execute an agreement with VandeWalle Architect for services for the new office additions at the highway shop not to exceed $425,000. 

“The $425,000 is not their fee, but the total overall project,” Fluit said. 

Commissioner Mike Poppens asked what the fee structure of the project would be. Fluit stated it was around $75,000. Commissioner Tiffani Landeen asked if any other architects were interested in the project. 

Fluit stated that VandeWalle was the only one who would take on a project this small. Motion approved 4-1 with Commissioner Joel Arends being the nay vote.

Arends requested board discussion and possible action to create an ad hoc committee to review growth and development in the Spring Creek area to develop a report to supplement the County Comprehensive Plan update. 

“We have a lot of actions that come in front of us from the Spring Creek area, that seems to be more often than not, one of those very populated areas that still happens to fall into the rural county jurisdictional area,” said Arends.

“It’s along the Big Sioux River and it falls completely outside the jurisdiction of Sioux Falls and to a certain extent the City of Harrisburg. What I want to do is get a group of stakeholders together who live in that Spring Creek and Lake Alvin area so that we can start to resolve some of these issues,” Arends continued. 

Arends does not believe all farmland in the county needs to be looked at, but certain areas in the Spring Creek development need to be reviewed and understand what the residents in that area are looking for in the future. 

Commissioners agreed to put a hold on the conversation for the time being until enough public comment had been received online to determine if a committee is needed. 

Arends also requested board discussion and action to declare Friday, March 29, 2024, Vietnam War Commemoration Day in Lincoln County. 

“Friday, March 29, 2024, is Vietnam Veterans War Commemoration Day and I want to thank our new VSO, Mr. Ackley for putting that presentation together and on Friday, out at the fairgrounds facility, he is going to hold the commemoration event for our Vietnam Veterans. Here in South Dakota, we had approximately 23,000 there at the start of 1965. We had 27,000 Vietnam Veteran-era Veterans who currently live in South Dakota. We have seven South Dakotans that remain missing in action, and we have 210 South Dakotans who made the ultimate sacrifice in Vietnam,” he said. Motion approved.