The Lincoln County Commission met Tuesday, March 11 in the Lincoln County Boardroom.
With all members present, the commission heard agenda items including title transfer changes, redesigns for the State’s Attorney’s Office, and department head presentations.
Treasurer, Francene Hofer was present for an announcement to the board regarding the Treasurer’s office stopping the process of title transfers after 4:30 p.m. starting April 1.
“With the new 605 drive system we have gotten from motor vehicle, and we are now needing to balance all of our stuff at the end of the day, so I am going to stop doing title transfers and new titles at 4:30. We will still be open until 5 to do renewals and tax process,” she said.
With no motion needed, the commission thanked Hofer for her time.
Chief Civil Deputy State’s Attorney, Drew DeGroot requested board discussion and possible action authorizing the chair to sign JLG Proposal for redesign.
“When we were going through some of the plans, I brought it to the chair’s attention, we were talking about office space for the State’s Attorney’s Office investigators. We are pretty much at capacity when we move out there. I have approached the chair about seeking to redesign to get more office space,” he said.
DeGroot is hoping to use the shell space between the State’s Attorney’s Office and the IT Department next to it. Chairwoman Tiffani Landeen asked for public comment. Scott Montgomery stood to voice his opinion.
“From my understanding, that’s about 60 some odd thousand dollars just for engineering this is that correct?” Montgomery said.
Chairwoman Landeen responded it was correct.
“How much are we going to spend to do it? We were led to believe that you were going to put four courtrooms and then there was going to be space for two more courtrooms, now we’re going to build a State’s Attorney’s Office and then when it gets full of State’s Attorneys, we’re going to boot them out of there. Where are they going? I’m a little confused here. It sounds like we’re getting a different story than what we had in the beginning, I mean, we got office space here, when they vacate this place, we’re going to have three courtrooms that they can move into. Why would we not utilize those?,” Montgomery asked.
“Sure it would be nice if they were all together, but there’s phones, there’s computers, there’s all kinds of options here. It’s $63,000 just for the engineering. I remember recently we bought a new desk, it was between $6,000 and $7,000 so how much money are we going to spend on this thing by the time we’re done?” Montgomery asked.
With no board discussion, Betty Otten made a motion to approve, seconded by Jim Schmidt. Motion carried 3-2 with Joel Arends and Doug Putnam being the no votes.
Toby Brown, Planning Director, was present to give the Planning and Zoning Department presentation.
“In the 1970’s the policy makers of the county, the Board of Commissioners, they adopted the County’s first comprehensive plan, after that, they adopted the first zoning regulation. They also adopted the first subdivision regulation, building code, and then throughout the years they’ve amended and added to those regulations, they’ve also adopted nuisance regulations. They also created the Planning and Zoning department for the county. The Planning and Zoning department is charged with administering and enforcing these laws that have been passed by the policy makers,” Brown said.
In 2025 Brown and his team will work on determining staffing needs, department capital asset needs, and coordinate county-wide capital improvements plan.
Commissioner Arends asked for Brown to clarify on whether the county is running out of available commercial and industrial land.
“I think that the build ready sites that are zoned commercial or industrial were lacking those spots right now,” he responded.
To remedy the problem, Brown hopes there will be future conversion from ag land to commercial industrial in the future. The board thanked Brown for his time.
Becky Vander Broek, Register of Deeds, was present for a department head presentation.
“The Register of Deeds record and archive land records, so deeds, mortgages, plats, easements, many other types of records that go against property or possibly affect property and we also do South Dakota vital records which is birth, marriage, and death certificates, and we issue marriage licenses. We also help the public find the records they are looking for,” she said.
For 2025 Vander Broek is hoping to digitize microfilm and books for better images, digitize index pages, and continue to update old documents with information to easily find documents.