Lincoln County Commissioners establish new Tax Increment District, plan Lake Alvin closure

With all members present, the Lincoln County Commissioners met Tuesday, July 9 in the Lincoln County Boardroom. Commissioners heard agenda items including tax increment districts, Lake Alvin closure and refunded taxes.

Commission Admin Officer, Steve Rasmussen brought forth a public hearing and resolution creating Tax Incremental District Number 10. Rasmussen introduced Todd Meierhenry to provide revenue projections. 

“What you do at this hearing for this resolution is that you set the boundaries, give it a name, give it a date of creation, and also create your tax increment fund to which your tax increment revenues would go,” Meierhenry said. 

Chairman Jim Jibben opened the floor for proponents of the resolution. 

Craig Lloyd was the first to speak. 

“I am Craig Lloyd with Lloyd Companies, I started in this in 2006, so I was a lot younger then and had a little hair, but we’ve been working on this for many years, Jim Schmidt has helped us work through the state, the Highway Department through many different changes in the Highway Department, and we’ve gone through four or five changes in the Federal Highway Commissions and that is what’s slowing this thing up the most. We’ve had about five people in the real world who are competitors, and they all came together to fast track this in 2010 to be open in 2020. Well, we’re behind now, but the group put in $4 million to try to create a partnership to help 85th Street,” he said.

 Mark Nordsy, who lives on 85th Street also approves of the idea. 

“I’m looking forward to this interchange being put in place and I’m so glad that people had the vision and are being bold instead of sitting on the sidelines waiting for us to get an overpass instead of an interchange and it’s important now for us to honor all that work,” he said. 

Commissioner Jibben opened the floor up for opponents, but with none in attendance, a motion by Joel Arends and seconded by Schmidt was made. The motion to create Tax Incremental District Number 10 was approved unanimously.

Commissioner Arends introduced Planning and Development Administrator Adam Kulesa to give a presentation on development of the Lake Alvin area. 

“Commissioner Arends reached out to me a couple of months ago requesting that South Dakota Game Fish and Parks come and provide an update to the County Commission to make you aware of what we have planned for the Lake Alvin Spillway replacement. This area sees approximately 120,000 visitors per year to the recreation area. The total land base is approximately 244 acres with 52 acres being recreational. While we have numerous amenities at this park, we do not have organized overnight camping at this park,” he said. 

Kulesa wanted to provide an update to the Commission on the spillway replacement project and work has already been done with tree removal in the area to stay within FEMA compliance. 

“During the 2022 legislative session, there was a bill passed to portion some general fund dollars to put towards the Lake Alvin spillway replacement that was damaged in 2019,” he said. 

The Lake Alvin recreational area will be closed beginning July 15 to complete the spillway replacement. Crews plan to use that time to work on the beaches and boat ramps to make more accessible points of entry. The board thanked Kulesa for the update.

Auditor, Sheri Lund requested board action to approve a refund of taxes for the tax year payable in 2022 in the amount of $85.64, tax year payable in 2023 in the amount of $93.84 and partial abatement and refund for the tax year payable in 2024 in the amount of $548.80 for a parcel in the City of Beresford parcel number 260.30.07.006, based on charitable exemption SDCL 10-4-9.1. 

“The note from the Director of Equalization says the application for exemption were not received for the parcel by the November 1 date, so she is recommending denial of the abatement applications because it did not have the exemption status,” she said. 

Motion failed unanimously.