Category: Editorial
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The Samco Road Fire Sale: Inside the AG Zoning Rush Along Cement Plant Road
Rapid City SD – Six items on the Rapid City Planning Commission’s July 23, 2026, consent calendar ask the city to reclassify a combined stretch of commercial, industrial, and residential land — most of it clustered along Cement Plant Road, Krebs Drive, and the Commerce Road corridor — down to General Agricultural District. On paper,…
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20 Acres of Breathing Room: A Win For Rapid City – Editorial
Rapid City SD –Let’s take a moment to celebrate a genuine, tangible victory for our local community. The GCC rezoning saga has finally crossed the finish line, and Rapid City is walking away with 20 fewer acres dedicated to heavy mining and extraction. If you watched the latest planning meeting, you might have caught the…
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Deja- Vu Zoning: The Cement Plants Other Half Isn’t Getting Rezoned – And That’s the Point
Case 26RZ029 goes before the Rapid City Planning Commission July 23, 2026 What Is Known Case 26RZ029 asks the Planning Commission to rezone two parcels currently sitting under South Dakota Codified Law § 11-4-30 — the 2001 state statute that froze the cement plant’s land into whatever use it had “as of December 28, 2000,”…
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The Mayor Took The Floor: What Salamun Said About the Sports Complex – And What He Didn’t
Rapid City SD – Mayor Jason Salamun does not, as a rule, address city committees from the public comment podium. He runs the executive branch; committee members ask the questions, staff answer them, and residents line up at the microphone to weigh in. That’s the format. On Wednesday, at the Legal and Finance Committee, Salamun…
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Razor Wire And Bassinets: Inside South Dakota’s New Women’s Prison
Rapid City SD – By 10:00 a.m. Friday, the July heat radiating off the fresh asphalt at 1020 N Creek Drive was already suffocating. It was the kind of sweltering Rapid City morning that makes standing in a suit feel like a punishment — a fact visibly written on the sweating faces of local legislators,…
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The Shipment of the Spectacle – An Editorial Reflection of Independence Day
Growing up on the Connecticut shoreline, with Mystic Seaport practically in our backyard, we were spoiled when it came to maritime history. We knew the water, and we all had boats. But boats are not ships. In the summer of 1976, looking out from the Westbrook coast, the horizon was swallowed by a fleet. It…
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The Runoff Plurality of Silence: The Gubernatorial Questionnaire They Ignored
On June 15, 2026, The Rapid City Sentinel submitted a formal press questionnaire to both campaigns competing in South Dakota’s first-ever gubernatorial runoff election. The questions were sent to Governor Larry Rhoden’s spokesperson Ian Fury and to Toby Doeden’s campaign at their public press address with a follow up email sent June 20,2026. The deadline…