The Lincoln County Board of Commission met Tuesday, August 13 in the Lincoln County Boardroom.
With all members present, Commissioners heard agenda items including demolition assessment, polling location changes, and airport committee appointments.
Auditor, Sheri Lund joined the meeting for board discussion with possible action regarding the demolition of tax deed property in the City of Lennox.
“We’ve got a couple options, we did get some bids to do a demolition of it, we really don’t have a reason to demolish it because it has not been a nuisance. So if we do the demo, we will not be able to recoup the money in a tax deed sale,” she said.
Building Superintendent, John Rombough was present to give the commission an update on the structure.
“The structure seems to be structurally okay as far as the framework, but inside it’s very wet and it’s very full of mold. The basement currently has water in it, I didn’t go into the basement. Access down into the basement stairwell is too weak to probably climb down. We did move forward and have asbestos checks and I have not gotten the results of that, but I don’t anticipate anything crazy showing up on that,” he said.
Commissioner Jim Schmidt asked if anyone had expressed interest in the building.
“I did have a couple calls regarding it because it was on the agenda earlier and they wanted to know when it was going to be sold. I told them that we were looking at other options and they said that they were in a construction business and had no worries about it because it looks sound,” Lund said.
Commissioner Joel Arends suggested placing the lot on the market for a few weeks to see if it could be sold and if no interest is found, reassess and possibly knock it down.
Mike Poppens made a motion to demolish the property, with no second, the motion failed.
With the motion failing, Auditor Lund asked for a motion to declared the property as surplus, appoint an appraisal committee, and authorize the Auditor to advertise for online auction of tax deed property on September 22.
Tiffani Landeen made a motion to declare the property surplus, seconded by Arends.
Motion passed 3-2 with Poppens and Jim Jibben being nay votes.
Auditor Lund next requested board action to approve polling location change for Precinct 27 and Precinct 29 in the City of Harrisburg.
“They will be moving it from the Harrisburg Methodist Church to the Liberty Elementary,” she said.
Lund explained to the commission there is more room in the commons of the school than in the church with the large populations in Ward I and Ward II. Lund will be sending notices out with the water bills each month to let residents know of the change of polling site from primaries to election day.
Chairman Jibben asked for public comment and Linda Montgomery took to the podium.
“I know that the VFW and their community center is an excellent place that has a lot of space. I’ve done meetings in there, it would be an ideal space for a voting place to be,” she said.
Motion approved.
Civil Deputy State’s Attorney, Joe Meader joined the meeting for board action to create an Airport Consultant Selection Committee.
“Every year the SDDOT and the FAA requires this board to recertify our airport consultant. There’s three things that are required of this commission when we do this and one of those things is creating an airport committee to actually review these applications that we will eventually seek. The SDDOT requires a minimum three-member board to create this committee, so I’m asking for board action today to nominate members to this committee,” he said.
Motion approved.
Chairman Jibben opened the floor up to public comment for items not on the agenda.
Mick Baruth was present.
“I heard discussion early this morning about possibly demolition of a property and it doesn’t look like the county wants to spend money to do that, well I think I just found you $100,000 a year. So much conversations about these tabulators that we used to count our ballots supposedly being more efficient and cheaper, I decided maybe it was time to look into what the actual cost of those machines are and Lincoln County has paid ESNS $514,000 since the year 2016,” said Baruth. “You’ll notice that about $80,000 of that was in non-election years. For what? This doesn’t even count the money you guys paid attorneys to keep the proof of the results from We the People. $100,000 a year to run our ballots through a machine when we’re talking about what, was there 4,000 ballots in the primary election, maybe 5,000, and this doesn’t count how much more has got to be spent in the year 2024 for the general election. About 28 years ago I learned the concept of follow the money trail, it explains almost everything. It looks to us like ESNS is taking in enough taxpayer money to launder some of it back to somebody just like out selected officials and unelected but also selected bureaucrats in Washington are lining their pockets with the endless wars in foreign aid. For you guys to defend these machines, common sense would say we could pay our own constituents a tenth or a fifth of that money to hand count these ballots. The only people who would defend this are somehow getting their pockets lined. They’re taking enough money to line somebody’s pockets. I would welcome all of you to attend our hand counting next week Monday and Wednesday in Harrisburg at the VFW so you can get an understanding of how transparent and efficient hand counting actually can be,” he said.
After more public input, the Commission went into Executive Session.
Comments